Supermom Serial Killer: Barbara Stager

Red Collar

Catherine Townsend

History, Red Collar, Con Artist, Investigation, American Greed, Society & Culture, Blood Money, Love Detective, White Collar Crime, Catherine Townsend, Hell And Gone, True Crime, Fraud, Murder, Documentary, Red Collar Crime, White Collar, Red Collar Diaries

4.6 • 604 Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2022

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The death of 40-year-old Russell Stager was ruled an accidental shooting - until Russell's ex-wife Jo Lynn told law enforcement that his wife, Barbara Stager, had a first husband who also died of a fatal shooting under very mysterious circumstances. Was Barbara Stager really the perfect Christian mother and wife, or a psychopathic serial killer with an addiction to sex and shopping?

Transcript

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0:00.0	It was 608 a.m. on Monday, February 1st, 1988. A.m., a.
0:08.0	18-year-old named Jason Stager called 911 in Durham, North Carolina.
0:13.0	Jason lived in a house on Fox Drive with his mother, Barbara Stager, and his stepfather,
0:19.0	40-year-old Russell Stager.
0:22.0	Durham is kind of a hybrid.
0:24.3	It has a lot of things that big cities have, like a massive airport in Raleigh-Durham.
0:29.5	And it has Duke University, which is massive.
0:32.4	But it's also got that small-town southern feel.
0:35.9	This was a quiet winter morning right after Super Bowl Sunday,
0:39.7	but that was all about to change. Jason told the 911 operator that Russ had been shot.
0:46.0	Soon, EMS crews and deputies from the Durham County Sheriff's Department arrived on the scene.
0:51.4	Jason Stager opened the door, and he led them upstairs to the master bedroom.
0:56.2	It was dark in there, and the door was open a couple of inches. Jason's mother, Barbara Stager,
1:02.2	who had told her son to call 911, was there too. The paramedics found Russell Stager in bed.
1:08.4	He was lying with his left side on the right side of the bed,
1:11.7	kind of sprawled across the bed. He was turned slightly toward the pillow, with his face kind of
1:17.4	pressed into the pillow. The pillow behind Russ's head was covered with blood. The paramedics could
1:24.4	immediately see that Russ had been shot in the back of the head, but he was still alive. So the paramedics could immediately see that Russ had been shot in the back of the head, but he was
1:28.5	still alive. So the paramedics immediately tried their best to stabilize him, and then he was
1:34.4	raced to Duke University Hospital. According to the book, Before He Wakes, A True Story of Money,
1:40.8	Marriage, Sex, and Murder, which was written by Jerry Bledsoe and has a lot of
1:45.3	really exhaustive detail about the case. Barbara told police that Russ had a 25 caliber pistol
	...

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