Delaware courthouse shooter’s wife speaks

The wife of the New Castle County Courthouse shooter who killed his former daughter-in-law, her friend and himself is now speaking out.

Videos of Lenore Matusiewicz talking to an online Christian radio station are posted on YouTube in two parts: Part 1, Part 2.

“There was a tragedy in Delaware… People died, people were wounded and those of us that are left are trying to make sense of it all,” Lenore started off saying in the two-part interview.

“Nothing was planned,” Lenore said, adding husband Tom made plans for a Reuben sandwich party after they returned to Texas and had planned a family trip to Disney World next year.

According to Lenore, Tom was diagnosed with a brain tumor in the ’90’s. She says it changed her husband, but vehemently denied he would ever hurt his family.

“It pressed on the part of his brain that controls memory, decision-making, reasoning, judgment and the other high functions.”

Yet on the morning of Feb. 11, Delaware State Police say Thomas Matusiewicz waited for his ex-daughter-in-law in the lobby of the courthouse and shot her and friend Laura Mulford point-blank, and also injured two Capitol Police officers, before turning the gun on himself.

Lenore says in the interview, initially, she was told son David was responsible.

“No was my first thought,” Lenore shouted. “David believes in God too much and he wanted to talk to Christine about their children. He wouldn’t have shot her.”

David, meantime, is in federal custody, charged with violating conditions of his parole. A revocation hearing is scheduled for this Thursday.

Lenore also speaks about former daughter-in-law Christine Belford. Matusiewicz makes a number of claims about Belford, saying she suffered from multiple personalities and that she threatened to sell her “three blonde, white American girls” for $50,000 each. Lenore wrote a laundry list of reasons why she and son, David, had no other choice but to kidnap his daughters, and about the miscarriage of justice being carried out in Delaware’s courts.

One bombshell in the interview comes in part one when sister-in-law M’Linda Kula, who’s seated beside Lenore, claims the Matusiewiczes might be victims of reverse discrimination. She talks about a conversation she overheard while seated in the Federal Public Defender’s office. She says a man named Karl said, “Discrimination hasn’t changed much. It’s still going on. The prosecution of these white people will look good to the public.”

There is a Karl Schwartz named as an attorney on staff, but WHYY is still waiting on a return call from the Federal Public Defender’s office. 

However, The News Journal quotes Federal Defender Edson Bostic as saying, “I will tell you, unequivocally, that nobody in my office would have made that statement.”