Dead woman walking–Convicted killer Teresa Lewis is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection this Thursday, September 30. If the execution goes through, Lewis will be the first woman to be executed in Virginia since 1912.
Lewis was convicted of killing her husband and stepson for $250,000 in insurance money. Death penalty activists say that Lewis is being treated unfairly because the 2 gunman who killed the victims only got life in prison.
According to the Richmond Times Dispatch:
Lewis, then 33, plotted with her then-22-year-old lover, Matthew Shallenberger, and his friend Rodney Fuller to murder her husband and stepson on Oct. 30, 2002. Killed were Julian Lewis, 51, and C.J. Lewis, 25, a soldier visiting the Lewises’ mobile home.
She was to be the beneficiary of her stepson’s $250,000 life insurance policy should he and her husband die. She left a door unlocked so Shallenberger and Fuller could enter early that morning. The two arrived armed with shotguns paid for by Teresa Lewis. She left the bedroom and waited in the kitchen during the shooting.
The gunfire over and her husband dying, Lewis retrieved his wallet from their bedroom and divided the money with the killers. She waited 45 minutes before calling for help, but Julian Lewis lived long enough to tell a deputy sheriff, “My wife knows who done this to me.”
Teresa Lewis, Shallenberger and Fuller pleaded guilty. The judge sentenced Shallenberger and Fuller to life and Lewis, whom he called “the head of this serpent,” to death.
