'You can come now, I killed the kids': Sobbing mom recounts the horrific phone call from ex-husband telling her he'd murdered their three daughters
The mother of three young girls
killed by their father in what prosecutors say was an act of revenge has
recalled the chilling phone call she received from her ex-husband
telling her what he had done.
'He said, "You can come now, I killed the kids,"' a weeping Jessica Schaffhausen told the St. Croix County Circuit Court in Hudson, Wisconsin on Thursday.
She told the court her daughters hadn’t seen their father, Aaron Schaffhausen, 35, in two months when he called last July to say he wanted to see them.
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While he had made threats about
harming the girls in the past, his mental state seemed to be improving
and she believed it was important for her daughters to have a
relationship with their father, she testified.
Schaffhausen, 33, said her phone had rang as she was leaving work on July 10. When he husband told her what he had done, her initial reaction was that he was playing a cruel joke which she told him wasn’t funny.
Then he hung up and she immediately called the police, staying on the line as she frantically drove to the local police station in River Falls, Wis., reports TwinCities.com.
‘I just wanted somebody to get there because they could have still been alive,’ she said, starting to cry.
Defense attorney John Kucinski asked if she wanted a break, but she told him she wanted to get the ordeal over with.
Schaffhausen was giving evidence on the second and final day of her testimony in her ex-husband's insanity trial.
On Wednesday she had testified that her ex-husband was 'catatonically depressed' but had begun taking medication and seemed to be getting better in 2011.
Aaron Schaffhausen has admitted to killing his three daughters on July 10 last year, but claims he was not responsible due to mental illness. Jurors will determine whether he was sane at the time of the slayings.
While testifying on Wednesday, Jessica Schaffhausen was shown a photograph of 11-year-old Amara, eight-year-old Sophie and five-year-old Cecilia and cried: '(They're) my babies.'
Jessica Schaffhausen said Aaron wasn't taking care of the girls or helping with chores and was playing video games for eight hours or more.
She also said: 'I would see him drinking every day, when I would see him.' She said she told him that she wanted him to change or she would divorce him.
The Schaffhausens filed for divorce in August 2011 and suddenly Aaron Schaffhausen's behavior changed.
Angry over the split he began calling his wife excessively and in a March 7 call, he spoke of killing their daughters, Jessica Schaffhausen said.
'He told me he wanted to drive down there and tie me up and make me pick which child he killed and make me watch, because he wanted to hurt me as much as I hurt him,' she said.
Co-workers in Minot also said they heard Aaron Schaffhausen talking about killing his family.
'You could tell that the divorce was weighing on him more and more,' said Jarrod Klein, who worked under him in the first half of 2012.
Klein testified that his boss was regularly drinking heavily and appeared angry.
Schaffhausen would make sporadic outbursts with regards to the divorce a couple times a week, and spoke of 'offing his family' and a man Jessica Schaffhausen has been dating, Klein said.
Jessica Schaffhausen told the court on Thursday that she started to notice a change for the better in her ex-husband.
Instead of profanity and anger-laden phone calls, he was friendly and open to sorting out issues left over from their marriage.
So when her he surprised her with an unexpected visit last July and said he wanted to see the girls at their home in River Falls, Jessica Schaffhausen conceded.
'They really missed him and really wanted to see him,' she said through tears on Thursday. 'They loved him so much.'
Earlier on Wednesday, jurors watched a three-hour interview of Aaron Schaffhausen, recorded by police on the day of the killings.
During the first two hours, he is silent. In the final hour, he broke down crying as an investigator asked him about tucking the girls into their beds.
When investigators asked if police should look for another suspect, he shook his head and said: 'No.'
Later, he is seen on the videotape saying: 'I don't know what I want; I don't know what I need. I want my girls back; I want a lot of things. Can you give them to me? Then quit offering the world like you have the keys.'
He later said: 'I need help.'
If Schaffhausen is found sane, he could go to prison for life. If the jury finds he was not responsible, he could be committed to a psychiatric institution and possibly be released at some point.
The second day at trial follows
statements from Schaffhausen's lawyers on Tuesday that their
client was in such an altered mental state when he brutally murdered his
three little girls that it felt 'like a dream'.
Defense lawyer John Kucinski said that his client was suffering an extremely rare and complex psychological condition and remembers almost nothing of the day he slit the throats of the three girls.
All Schaffhausen has said he can recall of the tragic events of July 10 when he killed his daughters, wrapped their necks with his spare T-shirts and tucked them into bed is choking his youngest girl as he claims to have suffered a devastating psychotic break.
Of the killing themselves, Kucinski said: 'When he's with Cecilia, something happens. The next thing he recalls, there's a lot of blood. The girls' throats are cut.'
According to court papers, Schaffhausen then tried to set the house on fire before calling his ex-wife.
She then called 911. Through
sobs and shallow breathing, she told the dispatcher her ex-husband had
history of mental illness and had stopped taking his antidepressants in
March or April. But she also said he had stopped drinking and had told
her he was feeling a lot better.
Schaffhausen's concession that he killed the girls transformed his trial into one that likely will determine whether he spends the rest of his life in prison or is committed to a psychiatric institution from which he might someday be released.
Three psychiatrists who evaluated Schaffhausen will testify. One said he was not guilty by reason of insanity. The other two said Schaffhausen likely understood what he was doing.
Aaron and Jessica Schaffhausen divorced in January 2011. Court papers indicate their marriage had been rocky for several years and finally broke up after she discovered he had lied about going back to school.
Jessica and the girls stayed in the house in River Falls, a community of about 15,000 people about 30 miles east of the Twin Cities. Aaron Schaffhausen took a construction job in Minot, N.D.
According to the complaint, Aaron Schaffhausen texted his ex-wife on July 10 to ask for an unscheduled visit with the girls. She consented but said he had to be gone before she got home because she didn't want to see him.
The day his ex-wife could legally remarry, Aaron Schaffhausen hopped aboard a train and left North Dakota to go back to Wisconsin. The next day, he cut their three young daughters' throats, wrapped their necks with his spare T-shirts and tucked them into bed.
Prosecutors used those details in opening statements on Tuesday to press their case that Schaffhausen was driven by revenge - not mental illness - and decided the best way to punish his ex-wife was to kill their girls. His defense attorney argued that Schaffhausen sank into depression after the divorce and couldn't control his emotions or actions.
As testimony began, jurors
heard a recording of a 40-minute 911 call from Schaffhausen's ex-wife,
Jessica Schaffhausen, in which she begged police to send officers to
check on her daughters.
'My ex-husband just called and said he killed my kids,' she told the dispatcher.
In his opening statement, Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Gary Freyberg said Aaron Schaffhausen was angry because he thought his ex-wife had begun seeing another man.
'Help was available if he wanted it. He didn't want help; he wanted revenge,' Freyberg said.
'He was so angry and so bitter that he decided to punish her in a way that he calculated would cause her the most harm possible.'
Besides the timing of the killings - right after a six-month waiting period for remarriage written into the couple's divorce decree - Freyberg cited as evidence of Schaffhausen's planning that he brought the tool he used to cut his daughters' throats with him from North Dakota and tried to destroy evidence afterward.
Defense attorney John Kucinski described Schaffhausen as a man in decline after the divorce. He described him as an obsessive person: first with work, then with school after he quit his job. After dropping out of school and moving out of the house, his obsession turned to his ex-wife, Jessica, Kucinski said.
Kucinski said Schaffhausen was
prescribed several different antidepressants following the divorce.
Schaffhausen sometimes mixed alcohol with his medication and his
behavior grew increasingly erratic, the defense attorney said.
He would call his ex-wife up to 30 times a day, and once threatened to tie her up and force her to choose which of their daughters to kill, Kucinski said.
Wisconsin requires at least ten of the 12 jurors to find the evidence shows a defendant suffered from a 'mental disease or defect' so great at the time that he or she 'lacked substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his or her conduct or conform his or her conduct to the requirements of law.'
Aaron Schaffhausen, 35, had pleaded not guilty in January, but switched his on Thursday last week after more than a day of delays and legal wrangling about what kind of evidence will be allowed at his trial, which starts next week.
Schaffhausen spoke in a flat tone that lacked emotion as he answered the judge’s questions about his change of heart.
‘Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?’ Judge Howard Cameron asked at one point.
‘Yes,’ Schaffhausen responded.
The mother of the three slain girls was in the courtroom for the second straight day.
With the plea change, prosecutors won’t have to prove Schaffhausen killed his daughters or that he tried to set fire to their River Falls home last July.
However, the defense will have to prove that he had a mental disease or defect, and that he lacked substantial capacity to appreciate that what he did was wrong or couldn’t control his impulses.
Jury selection is to begin Monday in St. Croix County Circuit Court.
Schaffhausen, who moved from River Falls and took a construction job in Minot, North Dakota, after splitting from his wife, Jessica, is charged with three counts of first-degree intentional homicide and one count of attempted arson.
Prosecutors
allege Schaffhausen did it to get back at his former spouse, because he
was bitter over their 2011 divorce and angry because he thought she had
begun seeing another man.
An hour after Schaffhausen placed the call to his ex-wife, he drove into the River Falls Police Station parking lot and surrendered.
Detectives noted that his clothing was stained with what appeared to be blood. They attempted to question him, but he remained silent.
Blood found on the father's shorts later matched Amara and Sophie, while blood stains on his socks matched Sophie.
If is expected the plea change would dramatically shorten the length of the trial. It was scheduled to last up to three weeks.
If he is found guilty and sane at the time of the crimes, he will be sentenced to life in prison. If he is found guilty and insane, he would be committed to a mental institution until a court determines he would no longer be a danger to himself or others.
Even prior to their divorce, the couple reportedly had relationship troubles.
River Falls police records cited by MyFox 9 indicate there was a domestic incident in August 2009 at the Schaffhausens’ Morningside residence, and a March 2012 harassment incident where the father allegedly threatened to harm at least one of the children.
No charges were filed in connection to the domestic incidents.
The couple married in May 2000 at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Springfield, according to an announcement published in The State Journal-Register.
Jessica Scaffhausen has worked since 2009 for a non-profit organization helping the elderly readjust to living in their own homes after spending time in nursing homes.
Autopsy results showed that the three girls died from 'sharp force injury' to the neck. The youngest child, Cecilia, had also been strangled, according to the criminal complaint.
Court records show the mother,
Jessica Schaffhausen, and Aaron Schaffhausen divorced this past January.
He lived in Minot, North Dakota while the girls lived with their mother
in River Falls, Wisconsin, in a house rented from Aaron Schaffhausen,
according to court records.
Investigators wrote in the complaint that Jessica Schaffhausen thought her ex-husband was working a construction job in Minot when he texted her just before noon Tuesday and asked for an unplanned visit with the girls. He had recently been fired.
The mother agreed, despite him previously making threats on her life, but told him to be gone by mid-afternoon because she didn't want to see him.
The girls' babysitter, Fallon
Moore, told detectives the girls were so excited to see him when he
arrived they rushed to him and took him upstairs to show him their
things. The babysitter hugged the girls goodbye and left, the complaint
said.
About two hours later, Aaron Schaffhausen called his ex-wife.
Mrs Schaffhausen immediately called police, who discovered the grisly scene. The girls' faces were caked in blood, which also covered the carpet in their bedroom.
Officers detected an odor they thought at first was natural gas. They discovered a gasoline container had been tipped over in the basement, spilling its contents.
An hour after he contacted his ex-wife, Aaron Schaffhausen drove into the River Falls Police Station parking lot and surrendered. Officers noted his shorts were stained with what appeared to be blood.
'He said, "You can come now, I killed the kids,"' a weeping Jessica Schaffhausen told the St. Croix County Circuit Court in Hudson, Wisconsin on Thursday.
She told the court her daughters hadn’t seen their father, Aaron Schaffhausen, 35, in two months when he called last July to say he wanted to see them.
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A mother's agony: Jessica Schaffhausen, pictured
with her youngest daughter Cecilia as a baby, wept in court as she
spoke about the horrific call she received from her ex-husband
Tragic lives taken too soon: Amara, 11, five-year-old Cecilia and eight-year-old Sophie (left to right)
Schaffhausen, 33, said her phone had rang as she was leaving work on July 10. When he husband told her what he had done, her initial reaction was that he was playing a cruel joke which she told him wasn’t funny.
Then he hung up and she immediately called the police, staying on the line as she frantically drove to the local police station in River Falls, Wis., reports TwinCities.com.
‘I just wanted somebody to get there because they could have still been alive,’ she said, starting to cry.
Defense attorney John Kucinski asked if she wanted a break, but she told him she wanted to get the ordeal over with.
Aaron Schaffhausen pictured during his trial in
Hudson, Wisconsin, claims he is not responsible for the murder of his
three daughters due to mental illness
Jessica Schaffhausen pictured with her eldest daughter 11-year-old Amara
On Wednesday she had testified that her ex-husband was 'catatonically depressed' but had begun taking medication and seemed to be getting better in 2011.
Aaron Schaffhausen has admitted to killing his three daughters on July 10 last year, but claims he was not responsible due to mental illness. Jurors will determine whether he was sane at the time of the slayings.
While testifying on Wednesday, Jessica Schaffhausen was shown a photograph of 11-year-old Amara, eight-year-old Sophie and five-year-old Cecilia and cried: '(They're) my babies.'
Jessica Schaffhausen said Aaron wasn't taking care of the girls or helping with chores and was playing video games for eight hours or more.
She also said: 'I would see him drinking every day, when I would see him.' She said she told him that she wanted him to change or she would divorce him.
Aaron Schaffhausen stands as jurors leave the
courtroom during opening statements in a St. Croix County Courtroom in
Hudson, Wisconsin on Tuesday
Tragedy: Autopsy results showed that the three
girls died from 'sharp force injury' to the neck and the youngest child,
Cecilia, had also been strangled
Angry over the split he began calling his wife excessively and in a March 7 call, he spoke of killing their daughters, Jessica Schaffhausen said.
'He told me he wanted to drive down there and tie me up and make me pick which child he killed and make me watch, because he wanted to hurt me as much as I hurt him,' she said.
Co-workers in Minot also said they heard Aaron Schaffhausen talking about killing his family.
'You could tell that the divorce was weighing on him more and more,' said Jarrod Klein, who worked under him in the first half of 2012.
Klein testified that his boss was regularly drinking heavily and appeared angry.
Schaffhausen would make sporadic outbursts with regards to the divorce a couple times a week, and spoke of 'offing his family' and a man Jessica Schaffhausen has been dating, Klein said.
Jessica Schaffhausen told the court on Thursday that she started to notice a change for the better in her ex-husband.
Instead of profanity and anger-laden phone calls, he was friendly and open to sorting out issues left over from their marriage.
Jessica Schaffhausen told the court that she let
her ex-husband spend time with his three daughters because 'they really
missed him and really wanted to see him'
Searching for a reason: Aaron Schaffhausen,
back to camera, watches as jurors are shown a video on Wednesday of his
initial interrogation
'It was some
of the best conversations we’d probably had in over a year,' she said.
Her former husband also said he wanted to play a part in his daughters’
lives again.So when her he surprised her with an unexpected visit last July and said he wanted to see the girls at their home in River Falls, Jessica Schaffhausen conceded.
'They really missed him and really wanted to see him,' she said through tears on Thursday. 'They loved him so much.'
Earlier on Wednesday, jurors watched a three-hour interview of Aaron Schaffhausen, recorded by police on the day of the killings.
During the first two hours, he is silent. In the final hour, he broke down crying as an investigator asked him about tucking the girls into their beds.
When investigators asked if police should look for another suspect, he shook his head and said: 'No.'
Later, he is seen on the videotape saying: 'I don't know what I want; I don't know what I need. I want my girls back; I want a lot of things. Can you give them to me? Then quit offering the world like you have the keys.'
He later said: 'I need help.'
If Schaffhausen is found sane, he could go to prison for life. If the jury finds he was not responsible, he could be committed to a psychiatric institution and possibly be released at some point.
Sad: The girls' baby sitter told detectives
the girls were so excited to see their father when he arrived they
rushed to him and took him upstairs to show him their things
Horror: Amara Schaffhausen, 11, Sophie
Schaffhausen, 8, and Cecilia Schaffhausen, 5, were found dead in their
home after their father cut their throats
Defense lawyer John Kucinski said that his client was suffering an extremely rare and complex psychological condition and remembers almost nothing of the day he slit the throats of the three girls.
All Schaffhausen has said he can recall of the tragic events of July 10 when he killed his daughters, wrapped their necks with his spare T-shirts and tucked them into bed is choking his youngest girl as he claims to have suffered a devastating psychotic break.
Of the killing themselves, Kucinski said: 'When he's with Cecilia, something happens. The next thing he recalls, there's a lot of blood. The girls' throats are cut.'
According to court papers, Schaffhausen then tried to set the house on fire before calling his ex-wife.
Jessica Schaffhausen told a Wisconsin court that
her ex-husband would play video games for eight-hour stretches and
drank every day
'I killed the kids': Police met the girls'
mother at her home (pictured) after the father called her saying he
killed their three girls
Schaffhausen's concession that he killed the girls transformed his trial into one that likely will determine whether he spends the rest of his life in prison or is committed to a psychiatric institution from which he might someday be released.
Three psychiatrists who evaluated Schaffhausen will testify. One said he was not guilty by reason of insanity. The other two said Schaffhausen likely understood what he was doing.
Aaron and Jessica Schaffhausen divorced in January 2011. Court papers indicate their marriage had been rocky for several years and finally broke up after she discovered he had lied about going back to school.
Aaron Schaffhausen, (center), follows his
attorney John Kucinski, left, Court - Schaffhausen is accused of killing
his three daughters on July 10 in River Falls
Schaffhausen nanny Fallon Moore is asked by
defense attorney John Kucinski to identify the three Schaffhausen girls
during the first day of Aaron Schaffhausen's trial
Jessica and the girls stayed in the house in River Falls, a community of about 15,000 people about 30 miles east of the Twin Cities. Aaron Schaffhausen took a construction job in Minot, N.D.
According to the complaint, Aaron Schaffhausen texted his ex-wife on July 10 to ask for an unscheduled visit with the girls. She consented but said he had to be gone before she got home because she didn't want to see him.
The day his ex-wife could legally remarry, Aaron Schaffhausen hopped aboard a train and left North Dakota to go back to Wisconsin. The next day, he cut their three young daughters' throats, wrapped their necks with his spare T-shirts and tucked them into bed.
Prosecutors used those details in opening statements on Tuesday to press their case that Schaffhausen was driven by revenge - not mental illness - and decided the best way to punish his ex-wife was to kill their girls. His defense attorney argued that Schaffhausen sank into depression after the divorce and couldn't control his emotions or actions.
State Prosecutor Gary Freyberg looks at Aaron Schaffhausen during opening statements in Schaffhausen's murder trial
'My ex-husband just called and said he killed my kids,' she told the dispatcher.
In his opening statement, Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Gary Freyberg said Aaron Schaffhausen was angry because he thought his ex-wife had begun seeing another man.
'Help was available if he wanted it. He didn't want help; he wanted revenge,' Freyberg said.
'He was so angry and so bitter that he decided to punish her in a way that he calculated would cause her the most harm possible.'
Besides the timing of the killings - right after a six-month waiting period for remarriage written into the couple's divorce decree - Freyberg cited as evidence of Schaffhausen's planning that he brought the tool he used to cut his daughters' throats with him from North Dakota and tried to destroy evidence afterward.
Defense attorney John Kucinski described Schaffhausen as a man in decline after the divorce. He described him as an obsessive person: first with work, then with school after he quit his job. After dropping out of school and moving out of the house, his obsession turned to his ex-wife, Jessica, Kucinski said.
State Prosecutor Gary Freyberg turns to Aaron
Schaffhausen and his attorneys as he holds a picture of Schaffhausen's
three children
He would call his ex-wife up to 30 times a day, and once threatened to tie her up and force her to choose which of their daughters to kill, Kucinski said.
Wisconsin requires at least ten of the 12 jurors to find the evidence shows a defendant suffered from a 'mental disease or defect' so great at the time that he or she 'lacked substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his or her conduct or conform his or her conduct to the requirements of law.'
Aaron Schaffhausen, 35, had pleaded not guilty in January, but switched his on Thursday last week after more than a day of delays and legal wrangling about what kind of evidence will be allowed at his trial, which starts next week.
Schaffhausen spoke in a flat tone that lacked emotion as he answered the judge’s questions about his change of heart.
Change of heart: Aaron Schaffhausen, 35, changed
his plea to guilty on Thursday last week, admitting that he killed his
three young daughters while maintaining he shouldn't be held responsible
because he was insane
Apathetic: Schaffhausen, right, spoke without
emotion while responding to Judge Howard W. Cameron's, left, question
regarding his change of plea on Thursday last week
‘Yes,’ Schaffhausen responded.
The mother of the three slain girls was in the courtroom for the second straight day.
With the plea change, prosecutors won’t have to prove Schaffhausen killed his daughters or that he tried to set fire to their River Falls home last July.
However, the defense will have to prove that he had a mental disease or defect, and that he lacked substantial capacity to appreciate that what he did was wrong or couldn’t control his impulses.
Jury selection is to begin Monday in St. Croix County Circuit Court.
Schaffhausen, who moved from River Falls and took a construction job in Minot, North Dakota, after splitting from his wife, Jessica, is charged with three counts of first-degree intentional homicide and one count of attempted arson.
Manacled: Schaffhausen was shackled at his ankles in a St. Croix County Courtroom as he sat for a hearing Thursday
An hour after Schaffhausen placed the call to his ex-wife, he drove into the River Falls Police Station parking lot and surrendered.
Detectives noted that his clothing was stained with what appeared to be blood. They attempted to question him, but he remained silent.
Blood found on the father's shorts later matched Amara and Sophie, while blood stains on his socks matched Sophie.
Aaron Schaffhausen allegedly murdered
11-year-old Amara (left), 8-year-old Sophie (right) and 5-year-old
Cecilia in July of last year
If he is found guilty and sane at the time of the crimes, he will be sentenced to life in prison. If he is found guilty and insane, he would be committed to a mental institution until a court determines he would no longer be a danger to himself or others.
Even prior to their divorce, the couple reportedly had relationship troubles.
River Falls police records cited by MyFox 9 indicate there was a domestic incident in August 2009 at the Schaffhausens’ Morningside residence, and a March 2012 harassment incident where the father allegedly threatened to harm at least one of the children.
No charges were filed in connection to the domestic incidents.
The couple married in May 2000 at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Springfield, according to an announcement published in The State Journal-Register.
Jessica Scaffhausen has worked since 2009 for a non-profit organization helping the elderly readjust to living in their own homes after spending time in nursing homes.
Autopsy results showed that the three girls died from 'sharp force injury' to the neck. The youngest child, Cecilia, had also been strangled, according to the criminal complaint.
Charged: Aaron Schaffhausen, 34, of Minot, North
Dakota, faces three counts of first-degree intentional homicide - each a
mandatory life sentence if convicted for stabbing his three daughters
to death
Investigators wrote in the complaint that Jessica Schaffhausen thought her ex-husband was working a construction job in Minot when he texted her just before noon Tuesday and asked for an unplanned visit with the girls. He had recently been fired.
The mother agreed, despite him previously making threats on her life, but told him to be gone by mid-afternoon because she didn't want to see him.
Brutal: Police found the girls tucked into their
beds, blankets up their necks with what appeared to be dried blood on
their faces and a large amount of blood also covered the bedroom carpet
About two hours later, Aaron Schaffhausen called his ex-wife.
Mrs Schaffhausen immediately called police, who discovered the grisly scene. The girls' faces were caked in blood, which also covered the carpet in their bedroom.
Officers detected an odor they thought at first was natural gas. They discovered a gasoline container had been tipped over in the basement, spilling its contents.
An hour after he contacted his ex-wife, Aaron Schaffhausen drove into the River Falls Police Station parking lot and surrendered. Officers noted his shorts were stained with what appeared to be blood.