At 11:16 p.m. on a Thursday, 911 dispatchers in Oklahoma heard a woman screaming, then what sounded like a gunshot. Nobody picked up when they called back.
Moments later a boy rang 911 from a neighbor’s house. His stepfather, he said, had shot his mother. Officers sent to a home in Collinsville found Sara Gilson, 43, and her estranged husband, Jeremiah Duffey, dead from apparent gunshot wounds to the head. Duffey went by Shawn on social media. Police are still investigating but say the deaths appear to be a murder-suicide.
The video
Less than two weeks earlier, on July 11, Gilson had posted a TikTok to her more than 30,000 followers. It borrowed a trend in which users pretend to sit for a Netflix documentary interview. Hers carried a blunt line of text: “Preparing for when Netflix drops a documentary about my soon to be ex husband who I just found out is a pedophile.” The caption read, “I wish I was joking.”
What police say came before
The accusation did not come from nowhere. On June 9, according to police, a girl and one of her parents reported that Duffey, who coached the girl’s traveling basketball team, had touched her inappropriately at an elementary school event that evening. Another coach saw it, police said, stepped in and told the girl’s parent.
Police also said “similar conduct by this coach towards this particular juvenile player was reported to have occurred over an extended period of time, in multiple law enforcement jurisdictions, across multiple states prior to this incident.” Duffey left the scene and officers had not seen him since.
Duffey belonged to the Osage tribe, and the school sits on tribal land. Owasso police therefore sent the case to the U.S. attorney’s office for review as a possible charge of lewd molestation of a minor. That ended their own jurisdiction over it.
Officers then called Gilson and told her how to ask for an emergency protective order. She did, and Tulsa County court records show it was granted June 10. Duffey was told to stay 100 yards from her and her home at all times. The attorney who had represented him did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
The children
Gilson’s son was taken into protective custody and later released to a parent who was not involved. She also leaves a daughter. An online fundraiser for the children describes her this way: “Sara was an incredible mom. Her children were the center of her world, and everything she did was for them.”
