After a man posing as a FedEx deliveryman forced his way into her family’s house and fatally shot her parents and four siblings, 15-year-old Cassidy Stay played dead until the killer fled the scene.
Bleeding from a wound on her head where a bullet grazed her, Cassidy managed to call 911.
“It was my Uncle Ronnie. He has been stalking my family for three weeks,” she told paramedics when they arrived at the Spring-area house, according to court documents. “He said he would shoot us and kill us.”
Cassidy would be the lone survivor of the July 2014 massacre, which Harris County prosecutors say unfolded in a moment of rage as Ronald Haskell hunted for his ex-wife, Melannie Lyon. Cassidy’s parents had been providing support to Lyon, the sister of Katie Stay, Cassidy’s mother. Ronald Haskell didn’t find his intended target, prosecutors said, but opened fire on the entire Stay family.
Cassidy’s phone call is believed to have prevented more violence, as Haskell was captured on the way to Lyon’s parents’ nearby home, police said.
Much has happened since that windy afternoon on July 9, 2014; Cassidy Stay is now 19, engaged, and attending Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
About 1,400 miles away in a Houston courtroom, Haskell will go on trial in the six killings on Monday, his 39th birthday.
Court filings show defense attorney Douglas Durham intends to present an insanity defense in the case, which has been rescheduled 20 times.
The start of the trial will end a long wait for friends, neighbors and relatives of the Stays.
“This man taking this family from us has hurt so many people,” said Moriah Davis, a close friend of Katie Stay’s. “I’m excited that this trial is finally happening so everyone can move forward.”
The Crime
The slayings reverberated around the nation, recalling the chilling murders of four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959, which was immortalized by Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.”
In the case of the Stay family murders, police said Haskell had come to Texas from California in search of his ex-wife, who had recently divorced him after years of sustained domestic abuse, court filings show. They had lived together in Utah before Melannie Lyon escaped. Haskell had moved to California. where a restraining order was issued against him after he allegedly duct-taped his mother to a chair and choked her because she had spoken to Lyon.
But Lyon wasn’t at her sister’s home in the suburban Spring neighborhood that Wednesday afternoon.
Police gave the following account: Dressed as a FedEx deliveryman, Haskell knocked on the door, then went away. When he came back and knocked on the door again, Cassidy quickly realized something was not right, especially when he mentioned his name. Cassidy tried to close the door, but the burly Haskell forced his way inside, brandishing a 9mm pistol and holding Cassidy and the rest of the children hostage until their parents, Stephen and Katie Stay, returned home. Upon their return, Haskell demanded to know where his ex-wife was, but either no one knew or would say.
Initial police reports were that Haskell had tied up members of the family before shooting them, but court documents say he only threatened to do so. Katie Stay tried to stop him, and he opened fire on the entire family, killing Stephen, 39; Katie, 34; and Bryan, 13; Emily, 9; Rebecca, 7; and Zach, 4. Cassidy lay motionless until Haskell fled in the Stays’ Honda sedan, reportedly continuing his search for his ex-wife.
Cassidy's 911 call saved her grandparents’ lives, officials said after the slayings. Harris County Precinct 4 deputy constables intercepted Haskell just seconds before he arrived at Lyon’s parents’ home, then chased him into a nearby cul-de-sac. After a long standoff, Haskell surrendered hours later.
“These people were seconds away from getting killed,” said Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman, then the assistant chief deputy of the agency.
A community in mourning
The Stays had moved to their home on Leaflet Lane, a short distance from Interstate 45 north of downtown Houston, just a few years before the shootings. They were active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Stephen Stay, a real estate broker, had started his own business just a year earlier. Katie Stay juggled taking care of their five children and trying to help her sister escape her dangerous marriage.
The massacre left friends and neighbors — and even community members who had never met them — reeling.
“I was so mad when it happened,” said Sylvia Collier, 72, who lives down the street from the Stays’ former home. “I was furious. How dare him come into our nice neighborhood ... and do that to this wonderful family?”
“It was a huge shock,” said Rebecca Taylor, a friend of Katie’s. The mass murder was one of three in greater Houston in 2014, claiming a total of 18 lives.
Relatives have generally declined to comment since the shootings, eager to shield Cassidy from the glare of publicity.
Cassidy’s paternal grandparents in California declined to speak ahead of the trial. They, along with the Stays’ neighbors and other relatives, banded together in the aftermath to grieve, remember the victims and support each other.
They organized a fundraiser to help pay for Cassidy’s future schooling — raising more than $300,000 in days. And hundreds more attended a vigil at Lemm Elementary when Cassidy was released from the hospital two days later.
About 1,500 people attended the family’s funeral.
And, Taylor said, those who knew the Stays try to maintain the enthusiasm and positivity that they always showed,
“Katie was a very positive and uplifting person,” she said. “One thing that has come from this — at this time of year, when it’s relatively close to the time it passed — a lot of her friends try and live kind of like Katie did: to be looking out for other people, and for those that need it.”
“Her motto was every day is a good day — to have a good day. To be happy, and not to sweat the small stuff. To enjoy your life and share that happiness with others.”
A long road to trial
As loved ones mourned and lawyers sparred in court, Haskell sat in a high-security wing of the Harris County Jail. The case was slowed by Hurricane Harvey’s damage to the courthouse in 2017, the election of a wave of new judges, and a defense attorney’s medical emergency.
Lawyers wrestled over Haskell’s mental health records, fought over motions to move the proceedings outside Harris County, and spent weeks reviewing more than 380 potential jurors.
If convicted of capital murder, Haskell could face the death penalty.
In court filings, Durham, the defense attorney, argued that his client was severely mentally ill on the day of the murders and didn’t know his conduct was wrong.
“The healthcare system does a very poor job of identifying and treating people with mental illness,” he said. “I think the evidence in this case will bear that out.”
But experts say Haskell’s defense team will face an extraordinarily high bar just to keep him from being executed, particularly given the apparent pre-planned nature of the crime.
“It’s a horrific case, and it’s just one of those ones where as a defense attorney, you’re basically facing an uphill battle to save your client’s life,” said Murray Newman, a former Harris County prosecutor who now works in private practice.
Mitchel P. Roth, a professor of criminal justice and criminology at Sam Houston State University, said the passage of time could benefit the alleged mass shooter, whom he classified as a “family annihilator.” But the defense will need to humanize Haskell to spare him from the death penalty, Roth said.
Court records detail numerous allegations against the California native. Starting in 2002, prosecutors say, he began a pattern of abuse that targeted his wife, sometimes spilling over to his children, parents and siblings.
He isolated his wife, moving to Utah to keep her from her family. He physically abused Lyon, sometimes in front of their children, and he sexually abused her, even while she was pregnant, according to prosecutors.
“What kind of sensitive portrait can they make of this guy?” Roth asked. “Who’s going to be rooting for him?”
Prosecutors plan to present reams of evidence, including 911 calls, on-scene recordings and autopsy photos of the slain parents and children. They have surveillance video of Haskell in the hours prior to the killings, as well as his bank information, hotel records, and police offense reports from three different states.
“Prosecutors remain steadfast in their duty to seek justice for the Stay family and our entire community,” said Dane Schiller, a spokesman for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office. “Jurors will hear what happened and render their verdict.”
The trial could last more than two months, state District Judge George Powell has said.
‘You don’t get to kill six people and live’
On the idyllic street where the Stays once lived, few of their old neighbors remain.
Harvey inundated the neighborhood, causing turnover in a city where everyone seems a newcomer.
Tyler Torkelson, 25, remembers the event; the swarm of cops, the whir of the helicopters overhead, the rallying behind Cassidy Stay, the grotesque audacity of a man willing to snuff out a family to palliate his ego.
He’ll be following the trial closely. And he isn’t sure he can stomach the idea of forgiveness.
“You don’t kill six people and get to live,” Torkelson said. “At least not in Texas.”
Source: houstonchronicle.com, Samantha Ketterer and St. John Barned-Smith, August 26, 2019
⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.
 |  |
Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde