Sheila Walsh Bellush was a mother of six who was murdered by a hired gunman named Joey Del Toro, on the orders of her ex-husband, Allen Blackthorne. Blackthorne who had stalked Bellush since their divorce in 1987, allegedly wanted custody of their two children.

Background

Bellush was born on October 19, 1962 in Topeka, Kansas

Topeka, Kansas

Topeka |Kansa]]: Tó Pee Kuh) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is situated along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was...

. Bellush married Blackthorne in 1982, and had two daughters, Stevie and Daryl. Their divorce was not amicable, with both accusing the other of abusing their children.

Sheila married Jamie Bellush in 1993, and had quadruplets two years later. They moved to Sarasota, Florida

Sarasota, Florida

Sarasota is a city located in Sarasota County on the southwestern coast of the U.S. state of Florida. It is south of the Tampa Bay Area and north of Fort Myers...

 when Jamie, her husband, got a promotion.

Murder

Blackthorne was unhappy with his divorce from Sheila, and began to harass her after she won custody of their children. When the Bellush family moved to Florida he tracked her down and decided to hire a hoodlum to scare her and possibly kill her. His golf

Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

ing buddy Daniel Alex Rocha, a minor criminal, seemed to him the best bet to set his plan in motion, and Blackthorne asked Rocha to help him. Rocha contacted his friend Samuel Gonzalez, who introduced him to his cousin Jose Luis Del Toro. Del Toro agreed to do the job in return for a monetary sum.

On November 7, 1997, Del Toro traveled to Sarasota, Florida in a car registered to his grandmother with the intention of assaulting Sheila. He stopped at a Sports Authority

Sports Authority

The Sports Authority, Inc. is one of the largest sporting goods retailers in the United States. It is headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, and operates more than 460 stores in 45 U.S...

 store to obtain camouflage clothes, and a gas station to get directions to the address Rocha gave him. On his way to Sheila's house, Del Toro was spotted by a suspicious neighbour who memorised his license plate. (This would later lead to his capture). Unaware of this incident, Del Toro continued to the Sarasota house, where he broke in and saw Sheila with the quadruplets. In an interview with police before his conviction, he told them that he saw her with her children and saw how caring she was and almost didn't go through with it. He was about to leave but Sheila noticed the door was open and then noticed him. He stated, he couldn't run so he shot her in the face with a .45 Caliber gun and then slit her throat in full view of the quadruplets. Her body was found a few hours later by 13-year-old Stevie when she returned from school.

Aftermath

Jose Del Toro fled to Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 after committing the murder. He was extradited to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in July 1999, and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and armed

Gun

A gun is a muzzle or breech-loaded projectile-firing weapon. There are various definitions depending on the nation and branch of service. A "gun" may be distinguished from other firearms in being a crew-served weapon such as a howitzer or mortar, as opposed to a small arm like a rifle or pistol,...

 burglary

Burglary

Burglary is a crime, the essence of which is illicit entry into a building for the purposes of committing an offense. Usually that offense will be theft, but most jurisdictions specify others which fall within the ambit of burglary...

 charges in 2000. Circuit Judge Paul Logan gave Del Toro two consecutive life sentences, the maximum penalty for both charges.

Gonzalez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder

Conspiracy (crime)

In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement...

 in June 1998 in a plea bargain

Plea bargain

A plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case whereby the prosecutor offers the defendant the opportunity to plead guilty, usually to a lesser charge or to the original criminal charge with a recommendation of a lighter than the maximum sentence.A plea bargain allows criminal defendants to...

; he was sentenced to 19 years in prison. Rocha opted to go to trial instead and was convicted of first degree murder in January 1999 with Gonzalez's testimony; he received a life sentence.

Blackthorne was convicted of federal charges of interstate conspiracy to commit murder and interstate domestic violence. He received two concurrent life sentences in a Texas federal prison and will never be eligible for parole. In 2001 he was nearly killed during an attack by a prison gang, after which he was segregated from the general prison population and eventually transferred to a Florida facility. He is now at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota.

Portrayals

The books Every Breath You Take by Ann Rule

Ann Rule

Ann Rule is an American true crime writer.-Personal life:Ann Rule was born on October 22, 1935 in Lowell, Michigan to Chester R. "Stack" Stackhouse and Sophie Hansen. Her mother was a school teacher, specializing in developmentally disabled children and her father was a basketball, football and...

 and The Truth is Stronger Than a Lie by Khari Imo are about this case.