True Crime Campfire - Schemer: The Crimes of Sheila Davalloo

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

We’ve covered our share of scary ladies on this show. In fact, bad bitches are one of our special interests. There was Tracey Richter, who murdered an innocent neighbor to frame him for a crime he didn’t commit. Marie Hilley, the serial poisoner who eluded police for years and once passed herself off as her own (fictional) twin sister. Marjorie Orbin, the Vegas showgirl who murdered her husband for his life insurance and left his dismembered body in the desert. I could keep going—there are a lot of ‘em. But this week, I think we may have found the scariest one yet. You can tell us if you think I’m wrong, but I think the woman we’re about to tell you about may be the worst of all the women we’ve covered so far…a woman whose heart is a swirling black hole of need and darkness. This is Schemer: The Crimes of Sheila Davalloo.Sources:Obsessed by M. William PhelpsOxygen's "Snapped," episode "Sheila Davalloo"Killer Women with Piers MorganMurderpedia (various articles): https://murderpedia.org/female.D/d/davalloo-sheila.htmFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. We've covered our share of scary ladies on this show. In fact, bad bitches are one of our special interests. There was Tracy Richter who murdered an innocent neighbor. to frame him for a crime he didn't commit. Marie Hilly, the serial poisoner who eluded police for years

and once passed herself off as her own fictional twin sister. Marjorie Orban, the vaguest showgirl who murdered her husband for his life insurance and left his dismembered body in the desert. I could keep going. There are a lot of them. But this week, I think we may have found the scariest one yet. You can tell us if you think I'm wrong, but I think the woman we're about to tell you about,

may be the worst of all the women we've covered so far, a woman whose heart is a swirling black hole of need and darkness. This is Schemer, the crimes of Sheila Davaloo. Just FYI, Katie's been screaming her lungs out coaching all week, so her voice is a little shot, so I'm going to be doing a little more of the talking this week. So, campers, for this one, were in Westchester County, New York, March 23, 2003. It was about 5.30 in the evening, and there was a fracas going on in the parking lot of a behavioral health center in Pleasantville. A man and a woman were struggling, fighting next to a car.

The man was trying to break free of the woman, who was grabbing at his jacket and trying to pull him toward her. Finally, the man took a swing at her, and she let go of his jacket. Spotting a group of people standing in front of the med center doors, the man started running. running toward them, yelling, help me, I've been stabbed. Shocked, the witnesses watched as the woman ran up behind him. Panting, she said, that's not true, he attacked me. The man looked rough, paper white, and struggling to breathe. He was bleeding profusely, blood all over his shirt.

They all watched as the guy sat down on the curb next to the entrance. Call 911, he said faintly. Please, the woman said, he needs help. And then she ran off, back toward her car. As one witness called for an ambulance, there was a hospital about a block down the road, another witness took off after the woman. They reached the car at about the same moment, and the witness reached into the car's open window and snatched the keys out of the ignition so the woman couldn't drive off.

Please, she said, I can drive him to the ER. But the witnesses weren't having it. Hell no, you're staying right here till the cops get here, they told her. As they waited for the ambulance, several witnesses heard the woman whisper to the man, don't you dare tell them what happened I'll get in trouble soon both the ambulance and the police came wailing up on the scene the EMTs could see immediately that this guy who said his name was Paul Christos was in bad trouble they rushed him down the street to the hospital he'd been stabbed pretty badly multiple times the knife had just managed to nick his heart if it had been any worse he'd be dead already doctors took him back for emergency surgery and back at the parking lot of the behavior Health Center, the police took the woman into custody. She was 33-year-old Sheila Davaloo, a well-to-do research scientist at Purdue Pharmaceuticals. She said she'd gotten home from work that afternoon and found her husband Paul bleeding on the floor. He'd asked her to look at his wounds, and she quickly realized

he was in trouble, so she'd rushed him to the hospital. Sheila didn't know that emergency surgery had saved her husband in the nick of time. She seemed to think he was dead. And the detective who was interviewing her, decided to let her think it. She didn't need to know yet that Paul Christos had made a statement, and the story he'd told was very different from hers. They'd been having some trouble in their marriage for a while, Paul said. He'd been trying to get her to work on it, but she hadn't seemed interested. Until that afternoon, when she said she wanted them to spend more time together. She said, hey, let's try this game I heard about from a guy at work. The game was kind of strange. she'd tie Paul to a chair

and blindfold him. Then she'd touch him with various objects from around the house and he'd try and guess what the objects were, just by touch. Interestingly, by the way, she claimed there was nothing sexual about this game. Uh-huh. Sure, Jan. I buy it.

So, Paul agreed to this. He let Sheila tie him to a chair, cover his eyes with a stalking. Nothing sexual there. She touched him with an orange, a TV remote, a candle. he was doing a good job guessing. But then Paul felt a hard thump on his chest and then a sharp pain. He jerked and the blindfold fell off and when it did he saw blood seeping through his t-shirt.

I think I accidentally hurt you, Sheila said. Paul was scared, confused. He thought maybe it was that candle she rubbed against me, like maybe the glass part had cut him. He didn't have time to think about it at the time. He was bleeding badly. Call 911, Paul told Sheila. He heard her pick up the phone in the kitchen, heard her talking to dispatcher, heard her say, hurry, hurry. But ten minutes passed, then twenty, then thirty, and no ambulance came. Paul had propped himself up on the couch. He was having trouble breathing. Later, he'd realize he had a punctured lung, and it felt better to sit up. Sheila sat down next to him on the couch and nuzzled him. I love you, Paul, she said. Sheila, where is the ambulance? Paul said.

He was starting to feel woozy. Then Sheila jumped up and went to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Here, she said, handing Paul a bottle, take this. Paul looked at the bottle. It was NyQuil. I don't need NyQuil, he said. I need to go to the hospital. Where is the ambulance?

Sheila grabbed the car keys and headed for the door. Look, why don't I go get a doctor from that urgent care down the street, she said. Paul was too weak to argue. but she was only gone for about five minutes before she came back in and said the urgent care was closed. And still, no ambulance. Finally, Paul had had enough. He stood up and headed for the door, swaying a little bit. He'd lost a lot of blood. I'm going to the ER, he told Sheila. You can't drive, she said, I'll take you. Now, Sheila definitely knew where the ER was at that hospital. She'd worked there once. She knew the place well. But for some reason, she was driving

super slowly. She talked Paul into getting into the back seat, and she kept glancing at him in the rear mirror. And then, instead of taking Paul to the ER entrance, she drove to the furthest parking lot she could at the medical complex, the one in front of the behavioral health center. She sat there for a few moments as of trying to decide something. Then she and Paul got out of the car. Sheila made like she was going to take his arm to help him inside, but then Paul saw a quick flash of silver and felt an excruciating pain. She was stabbing him. Until this moment, it hadn't occurred to Paul that his wife of three years had hurt him on purpose, but now it was impossible to deny it. She was trying to kill him, and that's when the fight started. If Paul hadn't been able to get

hold of the knife and hurl it away, if he'd been too weak to stumble toward the medical center doors, she might have murdered him right there in the parking lot. Back at the police station, they questioned Sheila about all this. She denied it all. Blindfold? What? What's a blindfold? But eventually she fessed up to the guessing game. It was an accident, she insisted. The knife had poked Paul by mistake. It just got rammed into him, she said. Okay. That sounds legit. Don't you hate when stuff just gets rammed into you? Okay, well, what about the second stabbing in the parking lot, they said?

Sheila denied that part outright. She also denied offering Paul Nyquil, but it was becoming increasingly clear to the detectives that she'd tried to kill her husband, and when he didn't die right away, she'd stalled for time, hoping he'd eventually lose too much blood and pass on. But she wasn't going to admit it.

She just kept saying it was an accident, and she never admitted to the parking lot stabbing. She was arrested and booked on attempted murder charges. Back at the hospital parking lot, police were gathering evidence, including Sheila's cell phone, which she'd apparently drop during the melee with her husband. By the way, if this is all sounding a little familiar to you, it might be because we did a very brief version of this case in a grab bag episode a few years ago,

but we barely scratched the surface. And we've always planned on coming back for a deep dive because this story is bonkers. Yeah, I've always regretted that we did a little snippet on this woman because she deserves an entire episode. She is awful. So, anyway, the detectives checked Sheila's cell phone to see if she'd really called 911 for Paul as she claimed she had.

Nope, she sure hadn't. But she had called somebody right after the first stabbing back at the house. A guy named Nelson Sessler. When they saw the name, the detectives thought it rang a faint bell in the back of their minds, something they'd heard or read about recently,

but they couldn't quite play it didn't take them long, though, to find out that Nelson was a co-worker of Sheila's at Purdue Farma, lived about 45 minutes up the road in Stamford, Connecticut. So the next day, they drove out there to see what they could find out about, and hopefully from, Nelson. Specifically, they were curious about why Sheila would call him, right after attacking her husband, instead of 911. So they got to Nelson's condo complex and started canvassing his neighbors, and one of the first people they spoke to didn't seem very surprised to see them. She said, oh, you must be here about the murder. The Westchester detectives wondered how in the hell this lady already knew about the incident

with Sheila and her husband, but news can travel fast, so they said, well, yes, we're here about the incident, the attempted murder. The lady looked confused. Oh, no, she said, I assumed you were here about Anna Lisa's murder. Anna Lisa, who the hell was Anna Lisa? Nelson Sessler's fiance, the lady said. She was murdered like five months ago. They still don't know who did it. That's not what you're here about? The detectives looked at each other. What in the sweet feck was going on here? So once they'd picked their lower jaws up off the floor, they went straight to the Stanford Police Department. And yeah, for the past five months, that department had been trying to solve the brutal murder of Anna Lisa Raimundo, a bright, beautiful young pharmaceutical executive, and the fiancé of

Nelson Sessler. It had happened in early November of 2002. Annalisa had been brutally stabbed and beaten in the midst of a mighty struggle. There was blood and broken glass all over her condo. She'd fought hard, but she'd lost to her killer who'd been armed with a knife, a 10-pound barbell from Annalisa's living room, and most likely a stun gun. The medical examiner had found two small burn marks on the body. Creepily, Anelisa had been on the phone with a friend the morning she was murdered, and she'd gotten off the phone quickly. The friend got the impression there was somebody at the door. It was probably her killer. The case had gone cold, but it was sure as shit heating up now, especially when the Stamford detectives played a 911 call they'd receive,

the one that initially alerted them to Annalisa's murder. It was a woman's voice, shaky and nervous. I think a guy is attacking my neighbor, she said. The call was an exercise and frustration for the 911 dispatcher. She couldn't get a straight answer out of this woman about what was going on and where. She just gave vague, inconsistent details about the address and a confusing, basically useless description of the guy, and then she hung up. Up until now, the call had been one of the big mysteries in the case. But when the Westchester detectives heard it, they knew immediately. That was the voice of Sheila Davaloo. Now that they had this dynamite new suspect, the Connecticut police rushed to get a sample of Sheila's DNA to try to match the samples found at Annalisa's murder scene.

Sheila, in her holding cell in Westchester County, on the charges related to Paul Stabbing, was cooperative, but totally denied involvement. Annalisa Ramundo was the shining star of her family, Harvard undergrad, Columbia Graduate School, working at the time of her murder as a pharmaceutical executive. Annalisa was only in her early 30s, but she was living the sweet life already. a wide circle of friends, a great career, a gorgeous two-story condo on the waterfront, and by all accounts, she was madly in love with her fiancé, Nelson Sessler. After the murder, cops were initially suspicious of Nelson.

He was weirdly calm on the day of the murder, falling asleep on a couch in the clubhouse of their condo complex while waiting for the police to take a statement, not seeming to show any emotion at all. But he had a pretty solid alibi, and police couldn't find any financial motive for him to kill Annalisa. It didn't seem that they had any history of abuse or violence, although some of Annalisa's friends told investigators

that Annalisa suspected Nelson might be cheating on her. Over the next few months, they exhausted all kinds of promising leads. A couple of Annalisa's exes, a local petty criminal who said he'd seen Annalisa arguing with a man on the day of the murder, some recent boat burglaries at the dock behind the condo complex, and Nelson Sessler had been cooperative, coming in for multiple interviews without an attorney. But in all those conversations with detectives, there was one crucial little detail Nelson had neglected to mention. A little detail named Sheila. Nelson and Sheila had started up an affair about a year before Annalisa's murder.

It had burned hot and heavy for a while, and then Nelson decided he wanted to ask Annalisa to marry him, so he cooled things off with Sheila. And that was that, Nelson claimed. Sheila and I were just going to stay friends. We weren't together for the few months before the murder. We just saw each other at work, he said. Sometimes maybe we'd walk her dogs together. But after Annalisa's murder, Nelson admitted, he and Sheila had reignited their affair,

hotter and heavier than ever. It wasn't that he continued the affair without missing a beat, he said. He was grieving for Annalisa, and Sheila reached out to be his shoulder to cry on, sent him a care package, offered to be there for him whatever he might need. She brought him food. She took care of him, and it just drew them back together. But here's the thing. Nelson had no idea Sheila was married. She told him she was divorced and living alone. He and Paul Christos had never heard of each other. The first Nelson ever heard of a husband was the day he'd showed up at Sheila's house to take her to dinner and bumped right into the police. They'd been the ones to tell him. You're girlfriends at the police station under arrest for stabbing her husband.

But we're going to put a pin in that for a minute, and let's get a little background on this beast. Sheila spent her early childhood in Iran. Her dad was Iranian, her mom Italian. Her family was wealthy and well-educated, full of scientists and academics. They immigrated to the U.S. when Sheila was very young. She was a high achiever, like everyone in her family. She studied biochemistry and undergrad, then went to graduate school, and it was there where she met her future husband slash stabbing victim Paul Christos and started a passionate romance. Paul was a research scientist working on his Ph.D. He was interested in cancer research specifically. He was easy on the eyes. Sheila was too, and they were both super smart and ambitious. They both liked camping and Star Trek and movies.

They enjoyed each other's company a lot. But Sheila told Paul her family wouldn't approve of their relationship because of their religious beliefs. They were Muslim. Paul was raised Catholic. and he could definitely tell that her parents didn't like him. Sheila was living with them at the time she and Paul first got together, and whenever he'd call for her and one of her parents would answer the phone, he'd get an ice-cold tone. One time Sheila's mom said something to him like, you're breaking up a family.

Dang, right? But he got the sense there was more to it than just religion. Sheila said there was a big family secret in the mix, too, something she could never tell him about. We can never really be together, she'd say. But no matter how much he tried to persuade her, Sheila wouldn't tell him the big secret. It turned out to be Sheila's secret, not so much her families. One day, right as things were starting to get really serious between him and Sheila,

Paul got a call from a soft-spoken man named Amir. That's not his real name, by the way. I wasn't able to find out his real name. Amir is the name that M. William Phelps gave him in his book Obsessed, which was one of our main sources for this case. And it is so good. So good. but we don't need to know his real name.

What we need to know is that Amir, according to him anyway, was Sheila's husband. The guy didn't seem mad that his wife was having an affair. Sheila is very emotional, he told Paul. We've been having some problems. He just seemed more tired than upset. Paul couldn't believe what he was hearing. He thought this must be some kind of awful joke. But he agreed to meet up with Amir at a coffee shop to talk about it.

And after a brief back and forth, Amir proved what he was saying was true by taking Paul by cab to his and Sheila's apartment in the city and having the concierge call up to their place. When Sheila answered the phone, Paul knew he'd been played. Sheila begged him not to dump her. Amir was an arranged marriage, she said. Her parents made her marry him. It was an Iranian thing. He was older. She couldn't relate to him.

She'd never been happy with him. But her parents would lose their minds if she left him. She was trying to figure a way out. Years later, Paul spoke with Sheila's parents about all this, and they told him it wasn't true. They hadn't arranged Sheila's marriage with Amir. They didn't even want her to marry him, but she insisted. This is such classic Sheila. Oh, my God.

It was true that once she married him, they wanted her to stick it out. They didn't believe in divorce, but she'd chosen Amir for herself. And again, if you hadn't figured her, this out by now, our girl Sheila is a grade A Olympic level champion liar. Lies are the air she breathed, lies and manipulation. Amir finally divorced Sheila when he figured out that she wasn't going to stop seeing Paul. Sheila and Paul got married soon after her divorce was final. Oh, and by the way, Sheila's parents ended up liking Paul and becoming friends with his parents. They actually didn't care about the religious differences between their families. That was just another lie,

Sheila told to hide the fact that she was married when they first started dating. Yeah, her parents actually seem lovely. It's very sad for them. Sheila went to work for Purdue Pharma after grad school as a research scientist. Paul took a research job with Cornell University. They bought a nice condo in Pleasantville, New York. It all looked great, but they soon started drifting apart. Sheila was involved in a volleyball league and Paul was working on his doctorate, so they didn't have a ton of time to spend together. And their sex life, never a huge part of their relationship, had fizzled to almost nothing. By 2002, they were really more like roommates than husband and wife. But Sheila didn't want a second divorce.

Her family would be super pissed, and it would be embarrassing for her. Sheila cared a lot about what people thought of her, like a lot lot, more than it's healthy to care. The thought of a second failed marriage was humiliating to her. Paul was so easygoing, he'd have given her a divorce no problem if she'd ask. for it, and he would have been fair about it. But instead, they basically lived as housemates, and the atmosphere between them became increasingly chilly. Paul wanted to work on the relationship. He still loved Sheila, but Sheila seemed to have no interest in that. She even started getting kind of mean. When they'd go out with other couples, she'd make nasty little degrading comments about Paul

in front of everybody. And then one day, Sheila made an odd request. She had a brother who suffered from schizophrenia, and he'd always been a weird point of tension in her and Paul's relationship. She'd never even told the brother when she and Paul got married, because she claimed it would upset him so much he might have a psychotic episode. The brother was possessive of Sheila and jealous. He didn't like spending time with her when anybody outside the family was around. Anytime Paula had tried to talk her into introducing him to the brother, Sheila had always refused point blank. Actually, she'd have like hours-long meltdowns, like if he just brought the brother up. And now, out of the blue, Sheila announced that she wanted her brother to start coming over for weekend visits.

Oh, great, Paul said. I can finally meet him. Paul was a good guy and he wanted to be there for his brother-in-law. But Sheila said, no, no, he didn't understand. What she wanted was for the brother to come over and stay for the weekend and for Paul to move out of the house while he was there. And she didn't mean, like, take an over nightbag and go to a friend's house. Oh, no. Every sign of this man had to be. be out of the house. He had to take everything he owned and load it into his car. Clothes, shoes, shaving cream, pictures, there could be no trace of Paul Christos in his own damn house. Now, here's where we probably have to talk about Paul a little bit, because bless his heart, apparently he is the chillest man on planet Earth and probably one of the most trusting, because come on, man, like, this is a bizarre request. And to those of us on the outside

looking in, like, it really could only mean one thing, right? That Sheila's cheating on you, and she wants to have her side guy over. Like, what else could it possibly be? But this apparently did not occur to Paul. I mean, he thought it was strange, but he trusted Sheila implicitly. And she'd always been super weird about her brother, so whatever. He agreed to do it. He was working on his Ph.D. at the time, so he could actually use the quiet time.

And soon, these weekend visits started happening pretty regularly. It shouldn't surprise anyone to hear that this was not really about Sheila's schizophrenic brother. In reality, she was having Paul clear out of the house so she could be with Nelson Sessla. I always like to say his name like that. Nelson Sessla, her Purdue co-worker and lover. She had become totally obsessed with him in recent months after they hooked up one night after a work party. And here's the kicker, yet again, Nelson didn't know she was married. She told him she was divorced.

So let's talk about Nelson Sessler, who boy. Nelson was a player. He was handsome, bigger than life, charming, women just fell all over this guy. Sheila knew he was dating somebody, Annalisa Ramundo, another Purdue co-worker. She knew they'd been on again and off again for a while now, but that didn't stop her from going after him like her life depended on it. According to Nelson, this was really just a fling for him. He was never in love with Sheila or anything like that. They were just kind of friends with benefits in his mind. The sex was fun and he enjoyed her company. Later, he'd claim he never realized how obsessed she was with him. I don't know if I believe that. I guess it's possible, but anytime she wrote him a letter, it was always I love you this and love

always that. She was writing in poetry. And then there was this. One time Nelson had to go to North Carolina on a work trip for Purdue. And as he was milling around with some co-workers at the hotel, he looked up to see Sheila heading toward him, just grinning ear to ear like, oh, wow, isn't this a coincidence? I didn't know you were going on this work trip. Later, Nelson found out Sheila had pulled strings to make sure she got to go on that trip. Yeah, man, she's not obsessed with you. And that's not the creepiest thing she did. One time, Sheila somehow found out about a weekend trip Nelson was taking. Got his flight info and everything and booked herself a flight to Vegas where his connecting flight was going to be.

Then she booked the seat right next to him on the plane. My man looked up to see her coming down the aisle of the plane like, what? Oh my God, what a co-winky dink. I'm like, dude, come on. People can sometimes have really bad radar for this kind of thing, but how many coincidences can you have before you start smelling a rat? Absolutely.

During the early months of her affair with Nelson, Sheila started talking nonstop about a love triangle that was going on at work. Her husband Paul and all her friends got an earful about Sheila's co-worker Jack, who was involved with his longtime girlfriend, Anna, and his lover, Sheila's friend Melissa. Melissa knew about Anna, but Anna didn't know about Melissa. It was all very days of our lives, and Sheila never shut up about it. People got sick to death of hearing it. And you know, that's saying something, because who doesn't love some good gossip? But... No kidding.

But Sheila went on and on about Jack, Melissa, and Anna ad nauseum. She drove Paul bananas with it. She was always asking him for a man's perspective on Jack's behavior. Why won't he make a choice between Melissa and Anna? How do you think he feels about Melissa? What should Melissa do if he won't make a choice between her and Anna? What did it mean if Jack sometimes had trouble, you know, get it in there with Melissa? Did that mean he wasn't really turned on by her sexually?

Oh, my God. And I don't know if this is like a hot take, but like if one of my friends is having like an affair with somebody, I don't know if I could continue to be friends with them. So I'd always be like, I'd be side-eyeing Sheila. I'd be like, why are you being, why are you friends with Melissa? She seems like a shitty person. Anyway, nobody could understand why Sheila was so obsessed with all these people and their ill-advised love triangle.

Of course, in reality, there was no Jack, no Anna and no Melissa. This was just Sheila's way of talking about. her own situation with Nelson and Annalisa. Melissa was Sheila herself. But of course, her husband Paul didn't know this. He didn't have any reason to doubt what she was saying, even when things started to get real weird. Like when Sheila came to him one night and said she and Melissa wanted to start following Jack around, just to see if he was spending time with Anna behind Melissa's back. Oh, wow. So Paul was kind of a nerd boy, and for a while he got real interested in like spy stuff. and as part of that interest, he'd bought a pair of night vision goggles in a little secret recording device that you could plug into somebody's phone to listen in on their calls.

For him, they were just toys to tinker around with, nothing sinister. Now, Sheila wanted to borrow the night vision goggles to help Melissa spy on Jack. That's messed up, Paul said, but he had trouble saying no to Sheila. He let her borrow the goggles. A few times after that, Sheila came home all flushed and excited, talking about how Jack almost caught her and Melissa. following him. Later on, she asked to borrow the recording device, too. Asked Paul how to attach it to a phone jack to record the calls. One day, Sheila suddenly announced to Paul that she wanted to get a dog. Two, actually. This was out of the blue for Paul. He had no idea Sheila liked dogs enough to want to have

two of them herself. He had no way of knowing her real motivation. Nelson had been talking about how much he missed his dog. His ex-girlfriend had kept the little guy after their breakup. Sheila made sure to get the exact same kind of dog. And Nelson started coming around just to visit the puppies and walk them around the neighborhood with her. There's no way he didn't know. He was just basking in it until it got scary. Like he's just pretending. He was like, oh, no, how could I know?

How could I know she was terrifyingly obsessed with me? Like, she got the same dog as you, bro. Same dog. Two of the same dog. Come on, Nelson, man. Two of the same dog. Yeah. That's messed up.

And also, like, can we talk about the audacity of this woman asking her husband for advice about her affair and, like, concealing it within this stupid little cover story? Like, the disrespect is just astounding. Sheila was also listening to Nelson's private voicemails at work, especially the ones from Annalisa. She knew his passcode. He'd left it written down somewhere in his office, and when he wasn't around, she'd sneak in there and listen to his message. messages. Is anybody else starting to get a whiff of boiling bunny here? But by late summer, early fall of 2002, Nelson was starting to lose interest in Sheila. Annalisa was pushing for an engagement and he didn't want to lose her. And Sheila was intense. The plain thing had freaked

him out a little bit. He'd really only kept the relationship going as long as he did because he felt bad for her because, you know, she was divorced and all alone. Join me in an eye roll. Yeah. He tried to sort of gently back out of it a few times, but Sheila was unflishable. She wrote him poems about the torrent of tears she'd shed at the thought of losing him. Oh boy, another one was a blizzard of cries. Poor to have mercy. Finally, Nelson arranged to set her up with a friend of his,

and at first it seemed like Sheila had transferred her obsession to this new lucky guy. The guy called Nelson up one day and said, can you tell your friend to stop emailing me all the time? I'm not interested. But it turned out that she was just trying to get the friend to set up group activities where Nelson would be invited to join them, just trying to use the guy to get close to Nelson again. She was the kind of bitch who asked her boyfriend if he'd still love her if she were a worm.

And then there's a six-hour meltdown when he has dates. Oh, come on. Listen, guys, just tell her you'd love her. if she was a worm. Okay? It's such an easy win. I mean, I'd love my husband if he was a worm, I guess, especially one of those like real big ones from Dune. I could saddle him up and we terrorize the town like Godzilla. Oh, Jesus. Do I have to put you in the king-shaming corner? It's a love that dare not speak its name, KT. Wormzilla and his human bride. I'd still love you if you were worm, by the way, if you even care, just for the record.

Thank you. Would you still want to do a podcast with me? Yeah. If your tiny little worm voice could project enough, I could build you, we could build you like this cute little ramp up to the microphone and you could just, Hey, E, E! Hey, E! Hey, E! Hello, Camper's, give you marshmallows and gather by the key fan camping. Don't you guys still listen to that? Would you love Katie if she were a worm? Let us know in the comments. Please, get in the comments. So at some point in that summer of 2002, as Nelson pulled further and further away from her, Sheila started asking friends if they knew where to buy a stun gun. And we know what happened on November 8th. Annalisa was talking on the phone with her friend when somebody knocked on the door of her condo.

About half an hour later, that weird 911 call came into the dispatch. Some guy is attacking my neighbor, and the police found Annalisa dead. Shortly thereafter, Sheila wormed her way back into Nelson's life, suited. did there, the worm. And this is interesting. Sheila had never been super sexual when they were involved before, but now she wanted kinkier and kinkier stuff. The sex was like way spicier after the murder than it ever was before. And I find that creepy for some reason. Just, ugh. And then poor Paul Christos ended up stabbed almost to death. I assume now that she had Nelson back, Sheila wasn't about to let a little thing like a husband come between them. She was desperate to

avoid a second divorce, so once again, she chose murder. She just didn't succeed this time. And I really wonder if she hadn't tried to kill her husband, would she have gotten on the cop's radar for Annalisa's murder? I don't know. Yeah. So back to the present. The Westchester detectives have just discovered Nelson Sessler and Sheila's possible connection to the murder of Annalisa Ramundo. The detectives went to talk to Nelson, who denied any involvement in Paul stabbing, but finally admitted he'd been involved with Sheila both before and after Annalise's murder. And the detectives were so mad. And of course they were. They're like, we've been talking to you for months and you didn't think to tell us you'd been having an affair. What the

hell? Nelson's a little shifty. He's a little shady for me. I don't think he was involved, but he's just, I don't know, he's shady. Shame is one hell of a drug. I think he was ashamed. And the fact that he continued the affair after the fact is disgusting. Like, I don't think he suspected her. I don't think he had thought he had anything to do with it. I just think he was like, well, might as well continue it. I'm getting some on the side.

You know? Yeah. Again, he had no idea Sheila was even married until the detectives told him. Just like Paul hadn't known she was married to a mirror. What had she said when she called him on the afternoon she stabbed Paul, the detectives wanted to know?

She'd called to make a date for eight that night, Nelson said. Holy shit. Seems like her plan was to wait for Paul to die of blood loss, stash him, I don't know, under the bed or someplace, and then go have dinner with Nelson. Ice, cold. Dang.

Detectives wondered, if she was willing to kill Paul to be with Nelson, would she be willing to kill Annalisa? Yeah, I'm guessing yeah. Yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh. Police quickly determined she didn't have an alibi for Annalisa's murder, unlike Nelson, who very much. did. He'd been at work all day, and soon they had a match between Sheila's DNA and some blood found at Annalisa's murder scene, and it was game over for Sheila. She was already in deep shit

for trying to kill her husband. She went to trial on attempted murder for that and got a 25-year sentence. I guess the jury didn't buy her. It just got rammed into him, defense. And then in 2004, she went on trial for killing Annalisa Raimundo. And of course, this narcissist hosebag defended herself at trial, which resulted in the surreal experience for Paul

and Nelson of being cross-examined by their ex, and in Paul's case attempted murderer. That must have been real fun for them. She was being framed, she insisted, for Annalisa's murder. By Nelson, I guess, or something. It wasn't really very clear, to be honest.

And this is delightful. jurors later said that one of the main things that convinced them of Sheila's guilt was getting to hear her talk so much in court. They heard her voice so much that they had no doubt it was her on that 911 call the day of the murder, so she screwed herself in more ways than one, defending herself. Fortunately, Sheila Davaloo was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison, consecutive to her sentence for Paul's attempted murder. And I think this says a lot about the level of ego we're dealing with here. at her sentencing, she thanked everybody like she was at the frickin' Oscars.

Like, I'd like to thank my family. I'd like to thank my friends. But you are going to prison. Not the Golden Globes. What are you doing? Sheila is still in prison where she belongs, still trying to manipulate. She swears up and down she's innocent, including in recent interviews with Pears Morgan and the TV show snapped.

She's also come up with a whole spiel about how at the time she stabbed her husband, she was dealing with a mental health issue, a dark figure that. that would sometimes appear in front of her and compel her to do terrible things. One time, she said, she watched it rip a book in half. Then when she looked down at her lap, the torn book was in her own hands. It was the dark figure who had compelled her to stab Paul. She would never have done it in her right mind. But by all accounts, except Sheila's, she never showed any signs of this kind of mental illness in her entire life.

And she never mentioned anything like it until after she was convicted of murder. I just think she's full as shit as usual. And I'll leave you with this chilling little story from her first marriage to Amir. During the time when their marriage was winding down, Amir woke up one morning to the overwhelming smell of natural gas in their apartment. It was practically choking. And then he heard this faint little hissing. You ran out to the kitchen and saw two things.

One, all the gas burners on the stove had been turned on, and two, Sheila was quietly slipping out the front door. Later, Sheila admitted she turned on the burners. She wouldn't admit she was trying to murder him, but what else could she have been thinking? Paul Christos never knew this story until after Sheila's trial. If he had, I think this story might have gone a little bit differently. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week.

But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. Thank you to Katie for playing hurt. I can hear how much your voice hurts you right now, and it's just, oh, you poor thing. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Joan, Jaden, Stacey with an I.E. Angry Kitten! All caps, awesome. G. and Ariel.

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