Southlake shooting highlights separation violence, experts say

Metro

Betsy Blaney
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, ARLINGTON AM, Page 5, © 1999

Scott Stone Jr. got deadly serious after he lost a bitter custody dispute with his former wife.

The divorced 35-year-old North Carolina doctor had initially agreed to let his former wife, Marisa Jackson, have custody of their two daughters, according to court documents filed by Jackson's attorney. For a time, Stone paid Jackson, also a physician, $400 a week in child support, records show.

But on March 9, 1998, after Stone had learned that Jackson was leaving Tarboro, N.C., with the children to take a job in Michigan, he had his attorney file a contentious motion to try to gain custody of the girls. In other court documents, Stone denied that he had agreed to let Jackson have custody.

Stone also stopped sending Jackson child support, court records show.

On July 5, days after a judge in Edgecombe County, N.C., awarded Jackson full custody, Stone flew to Texas, then ambushed and fatally shot Jackson as she jogged around a neighborhood lake in Southlake, where she and her daughters were visiting Stone's sister. Minutes later, he killed himself.

The shootings appear to highlight what experts call separation violence, which can erupt when people feel that their partner has left for good or when they lose custody of their children.

Sometimes there is a history of physical or psychological abuse. But a malicious custody case - as court documents appear to indicate the one between Stone and Jackson was - could trigger an individual to act violently, experts said.

In a Pennsylvania study of battering and abuse reports, 75 percent of those reported to authorities culminated with violent assaults on the abuse victims after they decided to leave, a Michigan abuse expert said.

In contested custody cases, parents attempt to cast their former spouses in as negative a light as possible, family law experts said. It can be a volatile situation, experts said.

"They {the parent who loses custody} feel shamed, humiliated by their former spouse," said Harry Baker, a psychologist who evaluates parents for Tarrant County family law judges and attorneys representing parents. "Violence is one avenue of response."

But it isn't just a former spouse who could be at risk, experts said. Attorneys, judges and psychologists involved in custody disputes get threatened, sometimes killed.

On July 1, 1992, George Lott pulled out a gun and started firing as the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth heard arguments in a case. A Tarrant County prosecutor and a Dallas lawyer were killed, and three other people were wounded.

Lott was gunning for the judge who granted custody of his son to the boy's mother, said Barbara Nunneley, a Hurst family law attorney who said she has been threatened numerous times by spouses of her clients.

After the shootings, Lott said his actions resulted from his frustration in trying to gain custody of his son.

Baker, who had evaluated Lott for the couple's 1990 divorce proceeding, said he was concerned that he might be a target before Lott surrendered himself about six hours after the shootings.

"George Lott never threatened anyone," Baker said. "He just quietly went about his business."

Spouses who are left by their mates often feel that they are entitled to have their partner "forever," and can't handle the reality that the person who left can live without them, experts said.

"There's people who say, `I just don't care about justice,'" Nunneley said. "The law no longer matters to them.

"You've got the people who act on those emotions and do this irrational thing that endangers the whole family. It should make us shudder, just shudder."

Mike McCurley, a Dallas attorney who is part of the largest divorce practice in Texas, agreed.

"The common thread is that those people were deeply troubled and the custody outcome was just the straw that broke the camel's back," McCurley said.

Tarboro police said they received no reports of domestic disputes involving Stone and Jackson, who were divorced in April 1997. A check of North Carolina records revealed no protective or restraining orders involving the couple.

Shootings after a custody decision are rare, Baker said

Stone's family members told a police chaplain that Stone's actions were out of character. Often, threats don't precede violence, Baker said.

"In fact, it's the people who huff and puff who bother me less," Baker said.

Susan McGee, a domestic violence expert in Ann Arbor, Mich., near where Jackson lived, said that most times, there is some type of abuse before the killing of a partner. But middle- and upper-middle- class homes see domestic abuse as a stigma and often don't report incidents, she said.

"They avoid calling the police like the plague," McGee said. "They want to keep things looking nice."

Even an established pattern of control - such as telling a spouse where and when she or he can go or with whom to associate - can be an indicator, McGee said.

Court records show that the Jackson-Stone custody battle was anything but amicable.

When Jackson moved to Michigan, Stone began placing the child support payments in an escrow fund instead of paying them directly to Jackson, court records show.

In answering the custody motion by Stone's attorney, Jackson's attorney was blunt, saying that Stone knew long before Jackson announced she was moving that she intended to relocate from Tarboro, court records state. Stone and Jackson lived in Tarboro for three years, two of which they were married.

Stone even watched his daughters when Jackson went to interview for the job she subsequently took in Ann Arbor, Mich., court records show. And Stone had "acknowledged and admitted" that it would be in the children's best interest for them to remain with their mother, records state.

Stone should have received reasonable visitation rights, but his ability to properly parent the children would compete with other facets of his life, according to documents filed by Jackson's attorney. According to Stone's obituary in a Racine, Wis., newspaper, his hobbies included sky diving, deep-sea fishing and scuba diving.

"Plaintiff Stone has always been more interested in his personal pursuits, including those with his paramour, rather than taking time or responsibility for the children," court documents state.

Relatives of Jackson and Stone declined to comment for this article.

The deaths of Jackson and Stone leave two daughters who must grow up without parents. Likewise, each family must live without a child or sibling.

"Look at all the lives this will impact," Nunneley said. "This is something they'll {the daughters} take with them into all their relationships - relationships with men and with their own children."

Betsy Blaney, (817) 685-3821 ecblaney@star-telegram.com