Ted Shaughnessy: Wife of renowned Texas jeweler killed in family home recounts how she shot at killers
AUSTIN, TEXAS: In the middle of the night, gunfire at Corey Shaughnessy's Texas home startled the 58-year-old. On March 2, 2018, she reported an intruder inside her Austin home by calling 911 in the morning.
Ted Shaughnessy, a wealthy jeweler from Austin and Corey's husband, was found dead in a hallway from multiple gunshot wounds when the police arrived. Bart, one of the Rottweilers owned by the family, had also been shot to death.
Corey Shaughnessy was supposed to be killed in plot
Corey, who had been married for thirty years, miraculously defended herself by shooting back at the intruder, but Ted suffered fatal injuries. However, that didn't stop her from planning for the possibility that the murderers would return.
"It was crazy. It was crazy. You don't go to sleep until the sun comes up. And then you set up zones in your house. You set up lines of fire so that if someone comes for you, you'll know where you're supposed to be shooting. And it's not good," Corey told NBC Dateline.
Speaking of the instant she retaliated, Corey remarked, "I don't remember the sound of my gun. I remember seeing the muzzle from the opposite gun. He's shooting at me and I'm shooting at him."
Detectives initially thought the couple's ownership of a neighborhood jewelry store might have served as a motive, but when it turned out that their own son and daughter-in-law had planned the bizarre murder-for-hire scheme, the investigation took a drastically different turn.
Jaclyn Alexa Edison and her then-husband Nicolas Shaughnessy hired two hitmen to kill his adoptive parents in a violent home invasion. At that time they were both 19 years old.
Though she was not physically harmed, authorities claim that Corey Shaughnessy was also supposed to be killed in the plot.
Aside from one door that had been opened in Nicolas Shaughnessy's bedroom, investigators found no evidence of forced entry into the house.
Ted and Corey Shaughnessy's son and his wife were in debt
The Austin home was the target of murder, not burglary, as the Travis County Sheriff's Office discovered when it started looking into Ted Shaughnessy's death.
The door to Nicolas Shaughnessy's room was left ajar, but there were no indications of forced entry. After some investigation, the detectives discovered that Nicolas Shaughnessy, the son of Ted and Corey, and his wife Jaclyn Alexa Edison were in debt and owed money to both Corey and a neighbor.
Nicolas was the only beneficiary to his parents' $2 million insurance money. Police received a tip that Nick Shaughnessy was looking for a hitman in Capital Station, Texas, to have his parents killed.
He had given 22-year-old Johnny Leon $10,000, and he had promised 21-year-old Arieon Smith $5,000 for every murder. On March 2, Smith made multiple attempts to reach Nicolas by phone before moving forward with the plan.
The Travis County Sheriff's Office arrested 19-year-old Nicolas and his wife, Jaclyn Alexa Edison, along with Johnny Leon and Arieon Smith, on charges of capital murder after phone and Internet records revealed the Shaughnessy murder plot.
Jaclyn was placed on 10 years of probation, and Nicolas Shaughnessy, Johnny Leon, and Arieon Smith received sentences of 35 years in prison.
