Shirley Winters

Last updated
Shirley Winters
Born (1958-02-27) February 27, 1958 (age 66)
New York
Conviction(s) Murder
Details
Victims2–10
Span of crimes
1966 –November 28, 2006
Country United States
State(s) New York
Date apprehended
March 2007

Shirley Winters (born February 27, 1958) is a convicted murderer, arsonist, and suspected serial killer from upstate New York. In 1980, she smothered her five-month-old son, Ronald Winters III. In 2007, she drowned 23-month-old Ryan Rivers. She is also suspected of killing three siblings in childhood, setting a fire which killed two of her older children in 1979, and on the day prior to that killed a friend's three children. Per a plea bargain, she cannot be prosecuted for those.

Contents

Early life

In 1966, Winters' 10-year-old brother and 4 and 11-year-old sisters died from an apparent carbon monoxide leak in the family home. [1]

In 1979, Winters' first two children, 3-year-old Colleen and 20-month-old John, died in a fire in the family's Hyde Lake cabin in Theresa, New York. Investigators blamed an electrical defect. [2] When her children's bodies were exhumed in March 2007, autopsies showed Colleen and John received blunt force head injuries before the fire had started. [3]

The day before the fire started at Winters' cabin, another fire started at Winters' friend's house in Hermon, New York, while her friend's three children were still inside. St. Lawrence County police re-investigated this fire in 2007. [4]

Winters was near at least seventeen fires since the 1979 ones, nine determined as arson. [5] She pleaded guilty to criminal mischief in relation to two in 1981. A November 12, 1989, fire started in a Syracuse home where Winters was staying with her three children. She rescued her four-year-old daughter and two-year-old son, but lost her five-year-old daughter, who rescued herself. [6]

Murders

On November 28, 2006, Ryan Rivers was found to be drowned at his grandparents' Pierrepont home, while Winters visited. [2] She was indicted by a St. Lawrence County grand jury in August 2007 of second-degree murder, first-degree assault and endangering the welfare of a child. [7]

This prompted police to exhume Winters' son, Ronald Winters III, who died on November 21, 1980, in Otisco, New York, of supposed sudden infant death syndrome. Based on their findings, police charged Winters with second-degree murder on March 28, 2007. [1]

On April 21, 2008, Winters pleaded guilty to manslaughter for drowning Rivers. Under the terms of the plea agreement, she also agreed to plead guilty in Onondaga County Court to first-degree manslaughter for smothering Winters. She was sentenced to 20 years for Rivers, and 8 to 25 years for Winters, to be served concurrently, with parole eligibility after 17 years. She was imprisoned at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility [8] By pleading guilty, she avoided possible second degree murder convictions and multiple life sentences, as well as prosecution for the 1979 murders of Colleen and John Winters. [9] In May 2024, Winters was released from prison and sent to a psychiatric facility. [10]

In media

Winters and her many crimes were featured on episode 8, "A Trail Of Ashes & Bodies in Otisco, New York," of the podcast Small Town Murder. [11]

A book that closely resembles the case and investigation into Winters was published under the title Teflon Shelly, written by Ron Ryan, Fire Investigator of the Onondaga County Department of Emergency Management and Chief of the Volunteer Fire Department, who worked on the case.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women</span> Womens prison in Bedford, New York

Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a women's prison in the town of Bedford, New York, is the only maximum security New York State women's prison. The prison previously opened under the name Westfield State Farm in 1901. It lies just outside the hamlet and census-designated place Bedford Hills, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Shawcross</span> American serial killer

Arthur John Shawcross, also known as The Genesee River Killer, was an American serial killer active in Rochester, New York from 1972 through 1989. Shawcross's first known murders took place in his hometown of Watertown, New York, where he killed a young boy and a girl. Under the terms of a plea bargain, he was allowed to plead guilty to one charge of manslaughter, for which he served 14 years of a 25-year sentence.

Thomas and Jackie Hawks were a couple from Prescott, Arizona, United States, who were murdered in 2004.

Ardeth Mary Margaret Wood was a Canadian graduate student who was killed in a forcible drowning in Ottawa. The initial search for Wood was one of the largest search efforts in the city's history, and the two-year search for her killer was one of the largest manhunts in Canada.

Jonathon Edington is a Fairfield, Connecticut, United States, patent lawyer who achieved national notoriety when, on August 28, 2006, he murdered his neighbor, Barry James, after being told that James had molested Edington's two-year-old daughter. There has been no evidence found that Barry James molested Edington's daughter or anyone else. On August 30 Edington was released on $1 million bond. It was widely expected that Edington would attempt to mount a psychiatric defense at his murder trial, however Edington instead pleaded guilty to the crime and was sentenced to 12 years in prison on August 31, 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicole Speirs</span>

Nicole Marie Speirs made headlines in the area of Tooele, Utah as a domestic violence murder victim. She was killed March 25, 2006 at age 22, by her then-boyfriend and father of her twins, Walter Smith. On the night of Nicole's death, Smith reported that he found her dead in her home, drowned in her bathtub, after returning from a trip to Idaho. The autopsy confirmed that drowning was the cause of death. Tooele is located approximately 18 miles west of Salt Lake City.

The body of Dean Shillingsworth was discovered by children in a pond in Mandurama Reserve at Ambarvale, New South Wales, Australia on 17 October 2007. The child's body was wrapped in two plastic bags contained within a tartan suitcase. Due to the length of time the child was in the water, the body was decomposed. The local police set up a crime scene which was investigated by NSW Police Forensic Services Group. The forensic evidence and investigation led to the boy's mother. Police subsequently arrested his mother, Rachel Pfitzner, who lived in nearby Rosemeadow. She was charged with Dean's murder. She pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to a maximum of 25½ years in prison.

Marie Noe was an American woman who was convicted in June 1999 of murdering eight of her children. Between 1949 and 1968, eight of the ten Noe children died of mysterious causes which were then attributed to sudden infant death syndrome. All eight children were healthy at birth and were developing normally. Two other children died of natural causes. Noe pleaded guilty in June 1999 to eight counts of second-degree murder, and was sentenced to 20 years' probation and psychiatric examination.

Nathaniel White is an American serial killer. Active in the Hudson Valley region, in and near Orange County, NY during the early 1990s, White confessed to beating and stabbing six women to death while on parole.

Ame Lynn Deal was an American 10-year-old girl who was murdered in Phoenix, Arizona, in July 2011. Deal had been the victim of long-term abuse by her family members before being locked inside a footlocker, where she subsequently died from suffocation. Sammantha and John Allen were convicted in 2017 of first degree murder and sentenced to death by lethal injection, while Sammantha Allen's mother, Cynthia Stoltzmann, arranged a plea deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Skylar Neese</span> 2012 murder in West Virginia, United States

Skylar Annette Neese was an American teenage girl who disappeared from her home in Star City, West Virginia, around midnight on July 6, 2012. Neese's body was found in January 2013, across the nearby state line, in Wayne Township, Greene County, Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Adrianna Hutto</span> Murder by drowning of child in Florida, U.S.

Adrianna Elaine Hutto was a seven-year-old American girl who lived in Esto, Florida. On August 8, 2007, Adrianna's mother, Amanda E. Lewis, made a 911 call stating that she had found her daughter in the family's pool and she was not breathing. Emergency personnel rushed Adrianna to the nearby hospital, Bay Medical, where she was pronounced dead about an hour after arrival. The death was initially treated as an accident until Adrianna's half-brother A.J., then six years old, told police that he had witnessed his mother "dunk" Adrianna in the pool as a form of corporal punishment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disappearance of Sara Anne Wood</span> Unsolved 1993 disappearance in the United States

Sara Anne Wood was a twelve-year-old American girl who disappeared while riding her bicycle home from Norwich Corners Church in Sauquoit, New York. She is believed to have been abducted less than half a mile from her own home by convicted child killer Lewis Stephen Lent Jr.

Katie Sharon Rough, a 7-year old English girl, died in the Woodthorpe area of her hometown of York in the United Kingdom, on 9 January 2017. She was killed by a girl aged 15 years old at the time, who handed herself in to the police immediately after attacking Rough. Under UK law, Rough's killer was considered a minor at the time of the killing, and so her name was not made publicly known in the subsequent investigation and trial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of April Tinsley</span> 1988 kidnapping and murder in Indiana

April Marie Tinsley was an eight-year-old girl from Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States, who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered in 1988. Her killer left several anonymous messages and notes in the Fort Wayne area between 1990 and 2004, openly boasting about April's murder and threatening to kill again.

Mackenzie Nicole Cowell was a 17-year-old American youth who went missing and was murdered in February 2010. She was last seen at the beauty school she attended in Wenatchee, Washington. Her body was discovered on the banks of the Columbia River four days later on February 13, 2010. A post-mortem examination determined she had been strangled, stabbed in the neck, and had suffered blunt force trauma to the head.

Ashley Zhao was a five-year-old girl who was discovered dead in her family's restaurant in Jackson Township, Stark County, Ohio, U.S., on January 10, 2017. Her death sparked an investigation led by the local police department in cooperation with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Wiley</span> Convicted American serial killer

Nicholas Lee Wiley, known as The Syracuse Serial Killer, is an American serial killer and sex offender who murdered at least three women in Syracuse, New York in 2004. He claimed to have killed a total of seven people, although his claims were never corroborated. For his known crimes, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

Thomas Edward Maupin is an American serial killer and rapist. An itinerant criminal with a history of violent crimes, including the abduction and murder of a 6-year-old girl in Washington, he was linked to the cold case murders of two women in Tennessee in 2001. He pleaded guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment, to be served with a 8-year sentence for an unrelated rape.

References

  1. 1 2 ""New York Mom Charged in 1980 Death of Child" FoxNews.com AP 3/29/07". Fox News . Archived from the original on May 3, 2008.
  2. 1 2 ""On a Trail of Tragedies" Syracuse Post-Standard O'Brien, John 3/28/07".
  3. ↑ Carey, Bill (June 28, 2008). "Winters enters guilty plea for manslaughter". News 10 Now. Archived from the original on 28 June 2008.
  4. ↑ ""Most Pyromaniacs Are Not Killers" Syracuse Post-Standard O'Brien, John 4/8/07".
  5. ↑ ""Mom Accused of Killing Son" Syracuse Post-Standard O'Hara, Jim and O'Brien, John 3/29/07".
  6. ↑ ""The Life of Shirley Winters" Syracuse Post-Standard 3/21/07".
  7. ↑ Ramirez, Pedro (November 28, 2007). "Trial set for Shirley Winters". syracuse.com.
  8. ↑ ""Shirley Winters pleads guilty" www.syracuse.com Dowty, Douglass April 22, 2008".
  9. ↑ ""Upstate NY woman pleads guilty to second child's death" Associated Press via newswatch50.com 4/25/08".
  10. ↑ https://www.syracuse.com/crime/2024/05/central-ny-child-killer-shirley-winters-to-be-released-on-mothers-day.html?outputType=amp
  11. ↑ "#008 - A Trail Of Ashes & Bodies in Otisco, New York". audioBoom. Retrieved 2017-09-18.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.