An Oklahoma woman known for posting on social media about parenting her children was fatally shot in an apparent murder-suicide by her husband a short time after she published a clip alluding to allegations that he had molested a minor, according to authorities and court records.
Sara Duffey – who was 43 and also went by Sara Gilson – Jeremiah Shawn Duffey, 48, were both found dead with gunshot wounds on Thursday at a home in suburban Tulsa, said statements from local police. Investigators suspected that Jeremiah had shot Sara and then himself.
She had sought a protective order on 10 June meant to keep Jeremiah away from the couple’s home in the Oklahoma city of Collinsville.
On that same day, another woman filed for a protective order aimed at keeping Jeremiah away from her daughter, Tulsa state court records show. Jeremiah had been caught by a fellow youth basketball coach kissing and fondling the girl, who later told her mother that Jeremiah had sent her inappropriate text messages, invited her to his hotel room while traveling and even gave her money meant “to keep her quiet”, said legal filings connected to the protective order that were reported by the Oklahoman newspaper.
Those allegations were reported to police in the city of Owasso, which is adjacent to Collinsville. Sara’s filing echoed the accusations – but added that Jeremiah had a firearm, threatened suicide and “went on the run”.
Sara on 11 July then posted a video to her tens of thousands of followers on the TikTok platform which showed her sitting down on a chair while somber faced under text reading, “Preparing for when Netflix drops a documentary about my soon to be ex husband who I just found out is a pedophile.”
“I wish I was joking,” Sara wrote under her “mrsgilson” handle, where she otherwise posted commentary on fashion trends and her two children.
It was 12 days later when police said they received an 11.15pm emergency call from inside Sara’s home in Collinsville. A woman could be heard screaming amid “what sounded to be a gunshot”, according to police, as NBC News reported.
A second emergency call then came from a neighboring home. It was a boy who had gone to a neighbor and reported that his stepfather had shot his mother, police said.
Police said they found the bodies of Sara and Jeremiah when they arrived to investigate. While the case remained under investigation, police said all indications were that he had killed her before dying by suicide.
Sara’s son was reportedly put in the custody of another parent who was uninvolved in the case.
News of Sara’s killing resulted in wide circulation of her 11 July video, which had accumulated about 15m views as of Sunday. It was also a stark reminder of how, in the US, more than half of female homicide victims are killed by current or former male intimate partners, according to crime report data cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The same data cited by the CDC show that about 20% of homicide victims overall die at the hands of an intimate partner.
An online fundraiser set up for Sara’s children described her as “an incredible mom” who “loved them fiercely, worked hard to provide for them and dreamed of giving them the best life possible”.
“Her children were the center of her world,” the fundraiser said. “And everything she did was for them.”
