For ITV’s final instalment of Killer Women, Piers Morgan travels to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York state to meet Sheila Davalloo.
Former pharmaceutical researcher Davalloo, who has never spoken publicly about her crimes, was convicted of the murder of Anna Lisa Raymundo in November 2002.
She bludgeoned the 32-year-old and stabbed her nearly 20 times in her Stamford, Connecticut condominium.
Prosecutors said Davalloo killed Raymundo because she was in a sexual relationship with Raymundo’s boyfriend Nelson Sessler and wanted him to herself.
Davalloo’s husband Paul Christos testified that he loaned her night-vision binoculars and eavesdropping devices. He also told the jury she had a lock-picking kit and practiced at home.
The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that a state law protecting a married couple’s conversations as confidential did not apply to Davalloo, who protested the use of self-incriminating comments she made to her husband as evidence against her during her trial.
In a shocking twist, Davalloo was only identified as a suspect in Raymundo’s murder after being arrested for stabbing Christos four months later during a violent sex game at their home in Pleasantville.
Police said Davalloo had persuaded Christos to play a game in which she handcuffed and blindfolded him and asked him to guess what she was touching him with. She then stabbed him with a paring knife, nicking his heart, though he survived.
It was only after Davalloo was arrested for that stabbing that a connection was made between her and Raymundo – namely that Raymundo’s boyfriend Sessler was Davalloo’s on-off lover and that the protagonist in this strange love triangle had decided to kill both her husband and her lover’s girlfriend in order to be with the man she really loved. State Attorney James Bernardi said of the trial: “Witness by witness, it revealed a tale of obsessive vanity.”
Davalloo was convicted of attempted murder in the stabbing of her husband and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
After she completes this, she will serve the 50-year prison sentence she received for Raymundo’s murder.
Killer Women will air on ITV on Thursday 20 July at 9pm.