Sheila Davalloo

Infobox Criminal
subject_name= Sheila Davalloo
date_of_birth= Birth date and age|1969|5|11|mf=y
place_of_birth= Iran
charge= Attempted murder and assault
penalty= 25-years
status= Imprisoned
spouse= Farid Moussavi (divorced)
Paul Christos (2000-2004; divorced)

Sheila Davalloo (born May 11, 1969) is an Iranian-American woman who was convicted of attempted murder for stabbing her husband, Paul Christos three times as he was blindfolded and handcuffed during a kinky game in their Pleasantville condominium.

Early life

Sheila Davalloo was born on May 11, 1969 in Iran. She had a hardtime living there dealing with violence and bombs going off in her backyard in her home country. In the mid-1970s, Sheila and her family came to the United States as immigrants settling in the town of Yorktown Heights, New York a hamelet of Yorktown, New York located in Westchester County, New York. She excelled in high school and went off to college at SUNY Stony Brook on Long Island located in Stony Brook, New York. She earned a biochemistry degree after college. She then went to a graduate program for her Master's Degree at New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York in the Westchester Medical Center area. She married her first husband, a business man and a family friend named Farid Moussavi. In class she met Paul Christos and their relationship went from the classroom to the bedroom. She had an affair with Paul behind her husband's back and after Moussavi found out she had an affair with Christos, he filed for divorced. Sheila Davalloo and Paul Christos married in 2000 after graduating from grad school and moved into a condominium on 21 Foxwood Drive, Pleasantville, New York. Sheila got a job as a research scientist at Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Connecticut where she met her worker and soon to be lover Nelson Sessler. When Davalloo and Sessler began to have an affair, she would get her husband out of their Foxwood Drive condominium by saying her schizophrenic brother Shahiem, who didn't know she lived with anyone, was staying over. Paul didn't know Sheila had a brother and he would take all his belongings with him and stay at his parent's house or a friends. It was an odd request but Paul was happy to oblige. After he would leave, Sheila would hide all evidence that she had a husband. She lied to Sessler, claiming she was divorced. Nelson was unaware of the fact she was married. They would long dinner together and spend time with each other.

Crime

On Sunday March 23, 2003 on a quiet afternoon Sheila Davalloo suggested Paul play a game she learned at work. She handcuffed and blindfolded her husband under the pretext of playing a "game". They were playing "guess what I'm touching you with". After Paul handcuffs Sheila and his turn is up to be handcuffed and blindfolded, Sheila stabbed her husband with a 4-inch paring knife from the kitchen in the chest twice claiming it was an accident and lost the key to the handcuffs. She then refused to call 911 despite his pleading. Davalloo grabbed her cell phone and dialed call 911 and told Christos that 911 was on other calls and to wait for them. Sheila tired to get a nearby doctor to the house but she said they were closed. Sheila found the handcuff key and took Christos to the Westchester Medical Center only after he begged her. Sheila released Paul from the handcuffs and blindfold and put him in the back seat of her car and drove him to the Westchester County Medical Center. Instead of parking in the emergency room lot, she drove to a secluded remote area of the medical center parking lot and stabbed him a third time, piercing his heart. At 5:30 p.m., an onlooker saw Christos and Davalloo arguing near the medical center's Behavioral Health Center and called 911. Employees of the Medical Center saw Paul struggle and immediately called 911. Christos underwent immediate open heart surgery. Davalloo fled and then came back and tried to get Paul back in her car but the employees wouldn't allow it. She was caught by the Mount Pleasant police, who also responded to the 911 call. One police officer was in the ambulance car and the other would take Sheila to the Westchester Police Department. She was questioned by police all night and lied about how he got the stab wounds in New York City when Paul was working there. When police arrived, they found Christos bleeding from multiple stab wounds to the chest. He also was stabbed in the upper back and required surgery because of his injuries, authorities said. Westchester and Pleasantville detectives were continuing to investigate the crime and planned to speak to Christos. Paul had recovered from his injuries. After looking at Sheila's cell phone records and her recent calls, police found out she didn't actually call 911, she called somebody else on her phone under the contact name "Nelson" during the stabbing at 4:59 PM. She told them that Nelson's last name was Sessler. The next morning Sheila Davalloo was arrested for attempted murder, first-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon and placed into the Westchester County County Jail. On March 26, 2003 Nelson Sessler, Sheila Davalloo's lover was questioned by the Stamford police about the stabbing of her husband and was surprised to find out Sheila was married. When they told him what Sheila called him for, he said that she wanted him to come over her house for a date around 8:30 to 9:00 PM.

The Murder of Anna Lisa Raymundo

On November 8, 2002 at 12:19 p.m., police received an anonymous phone call from a woman at a pay phone at the nearby Duchess restaurant on Shippan Avenue. The caller said her neighbor was being attacked by a male, according to a search warrant obtained by police. Police went to the condo, found Raymundo's door unlocked, pushed it open and saw her body lying in the foyer. Signs of a violent struggle included glass fragments, debris and blood spatters. According to sources, Raymundo had suffered a head injury and was stabbed almost 20 times. She had hair in her hand. A woman was spotted outside her condo that afternoon. In May 2003, police said the investigation was focusing on a woman who worked with Raymundo at Purdue and, since then, evidence has mounted against Davalloo. Davalloo was dating Sessler at the same time Raymundo dated him, when all three worked at Purdue. Sessler ended his relationship with Davalloo when he became engaged with Raymundo. Two months after the killing, Davalloo resumed her relationship with Sessler.

Trial and Conviction

On February 4, 2004 Sheila Davalloo stood trial for the attempted murder of her husband Paul at the Westchester County Courthouse in White Plains, New York, the small courtroom was packed with people. Christos told a judge he had never seen Davalloo act violently before until she stabbed him in the heart 3 times. [ [http://www.drirene.com/catbox/lofiversion/index.php?t4154.html "Unsolved Crimes as of January 2004"] . Invision Power Board, 2001-2007] In their opening statement, the prosecution viewed Sheila as a deceitful and manipulative woman. Sheila didn't want to shame her family because in her family divorce was a shameful thing so to avoid a second divorce and more embarrassment to the family she decided to kill her husband. She didn't want her second marriage to Paul to end in divorce. According to the prosecution Sheila tried to kill her husband so that she can remain with her lover Nelson Sessler. To back up their theory prosecutors played the police interrogation tape where Sheila lied to police on how Paul got his stab wounds. The jury deliberated and Judge Thomas Dickerson read the verdict. On February 18 the jury deliberated and they reached their verdict the next day. Before reading the verdict Judge Thomas Dickerson told Sheila that she tried to kill her husband, she waited for him to die and that she had lied over and over claiming that she was a dangerous threat to society and she shouldn't be allowed to walk into society. Davalloo was convicted of attempted murder and first-degree assault. [ [http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/scn-sa-murders2dec09,0,5308555.story?coll=stam-news-local-headlines "Study: Stricter three-strikes law wouldn't prevent many violent acts"] . The Advocate, December 9 2007] The detectives were in court for the verdict, and Alison Carpentier said Davalloo was a dangerous woman who thought she could get away with what she did. "I found her to be deceptive from the beginning," Carpentier said. "I think she's very calculating." Davalloo's parents did not attend the trial. She maintained a close relationship with her in-laws, often sitting with them in the hallway during breaks in the trial. As court officers handcuffed her yesterday, she told Brundage to give her purse to her mother-in-law. Christos' mother began crying after the verdict was announced and declined to comment afterward. She had been free on $50,000 bail during her trial, but Judge Dickerson ordered Sheila to be held in the Westchester County jail until her sentencing on April 6. "Her goal was to deliver a corpse to the emergency room", said Judge Thomas Dickerson during her sentencing hearing. She faced a minimum five year sentence but at her sentencing hearing on April 6, 2004 Sheila Davalloo was sentenced to the maximum of 25-years in state prison without the possibility for parole which was the toughest sentence allowed by New York State law.

Aftermath

Paul Christos, filed for divorce, but he still remained supportive of his wife after the stabbing. He said he wanted Davalloo to get treatment for her mental illness and not go to prison. After that, he suggested she might deserve some prison time, but he remained uncertain what her true intentions were when she plunged the knife into him. Sheila Davalloo is currently serving her 25-year sentence in New York's Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Bedford, New York, the state's largest and only maximum security prison for women. In 2006 her life was profiled on the Oxygen television series "Snapped", which focuses on female criminals and murderers. Nearly five years to Raymundo's murder in Stamford, authorities obtained a warrant on November 6, 2007 to arrest Sheila Davalloo. The Stamford police were seeking to extradite Davalloo, to stand trial for the murder of Anna Lisa Raymundo. [ [http://www.nyjournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071121/NEWS02/711210348 "Pleasantville woman who tried to kill husband charged with murder in love triangle"] . Lower Hudson Online, November 21, 2007]

References