On the 911 recording from July 23, the dispatcher can be heard describing a “woman screaming,” then a “loud bang.” Twelve days earlier, Sara Gilson had told her TikTok audience that her husband was a pedophile.
Gilson, 43, an Oklahoma mother of two and social media influencer, was shot at her home in Owasso, just outside Tulsa. Police say her estranged husband, 48-year-old Jeremiah “Shawn” Duffey, killed her and then turned the gun on himself. Authorities are still investigating, and NBC News reported that the two were found dead from apparent gunshot wounds to the head.
The TikTok and the court filings
The video went up on July 11, according to the New York Post. Duffey coached youth basketball. Around the same time, the mother of a 15-year-old girl on his team accused him in a protective order filing of kissing and inappropriately touching her daughter. Court documents seen by the Oklahoman say the mother also alleged he invited the girl to his hotel room on a tournament trip and offered her money “to keep her quiet.”
Duffey fled after that allegation, NBC reported. Police did not see him again until the day Gilson died.
Gilson had her own paper trail. On June 10 she filed for an emergency protective order, writing that her husband had a gun, had threatened suicide and “went on the run.” A court granted it, ordered him out of the family home and told him to stay 100 yards from her. On June 23 the order was extended through Aug. 24. NBC, reviewing court records, found she had sought multiple protection orders against him over five years, and that Duffey had made allegations of physical, verbal and emotional abuse in his own applications.
A last day described as happy
Her final Instagram post, from July 3, showed a Florida trip. “Take me back to Miami,” she wrote. “Best weekend of my life.”
Kelsi Lard, a 36-year-old tattoo artist and Gilson’s friend of 23 years, said she was with her on July 23, the day she died. “Her last day, she was happy. As always, she was cracking jokes and making me laugh,” Lard told People. “I don’t want her life to be diminished into what happened in the end.” Lard said Gilson and her children had been “failed” by the justice system. A GoFundMe for the two children had raised more than $30,000 of its $35,000 target by the following Monday, the Post reported.
The estate fight
On Aug. 4, NBC reported that Gilson’s ex-husband, Lyle Landers, had filed a four-page court document asking a judge to bar Duffey’s beneficiaries from inheriting from her. Landers and Gilson share two children, who are minors. His lawyers argued that she died without a will and cited an Oklahoma statute informally called the slayer statute, which keeps a killer from profiting from a death. Landers says he should serve as administrator of the estate and wants it preserved for the children.
Landers said he had urged his ex-wife to leave the marriage. “I knew that he had violent tendencies, but I didn’t think he had this in him. I really didn’t,” he said.
Sources
- Oklahoma influencer Sara Gilson's final post revealed as pal recalls 'happy' last day
- TikTok influencer’s ex-husband seeks to block alleged killer’s beneficiaries from her estate
