Wife of slain Austin jeweler says daughter-in-law Jaclyn Edison got away with murder
When "48 Hours" found Jaclyn Edison sitting on a bench with a book in her hand, we might have mistaken her for a young professional on her lunch break. But Edison wasn't on the job. She was on probation.
She was sitting in front of an Austin, Texas, jail, where she'd just finished serving time after pleading guilty in a 2018 murder plot that sent three others to prison for up to 35 years. So why did Edison get a sentence of 120 days behind bars?
"48 Hours" contributor Jim Axelrod reports on the crime – and the punishments – in "Shootout at the Shaughnessys,'" now streaming on Paramount+.
The March 2, 2018 shooting murder of affluent jeweler Ted Shaughnessy, and the near-murder of his wife Corey shocked people in Austin, where many knew the couple and assumed they'd been targeted as part of some sort of botched robbery. With no relevant prints from any outsiders at the scene, authorities had to consider the victim's widow herself as a suspect.
But in the following weeks, they cleared Corey Shaughnessey and concluded her son Nicolas Shaughnessy had planned the murder with his high school sweetheart Jaclyn Edison so they could live large on the Shaughnessys' money, hiring two hit men to do the dirty work.
It was just after 4 a.m., when police say two intruders entered the Shaughnessys' sprawling suburban home. Corey said she woke up when she heard one of their two pet Rottweilers bark.
"Ted sits up in bed … and he grabbed his gun … to go see what it was," she said. "I hadn't even gotten my head back on the pillow … before I heard the first gunshot … And then there was a barrage of gunfire."
Corey said she was still in bed when the shooting suddenly turned in her direction. She grabbed a .357 revolver from above her headboard and returned fire. "I ran out of ammo … I just bailed into the closet."
Trapped in the closet with bullets flying, she said she called 911.
"Travis County 911 … do you need police, fire, or paramedic?" asked the dispatch operator. "I don't know," Corey responded. "I'm in the closet!" "There were shots fired … Help me!" "OK, we're helping you ma'am," the operator said. "Help me!" Corey sobbed again.
Even in her hiding place, Corey couldn't escape the horror unfolding in the house. "I heard this horrible, horrible moaning," she said. "When I came out of the closet … I saw Ted's legs and I could tell he was dead."
When police arrived at the scene minutes later, it looked like a battlefield. Broken glass and bullet casings were scattered on the floor. Ted's lifeless body lay in a pool of blood near the kitchen table. One of the dogs had been shot dead in the master bedroom.
Corey told authorities she hadn't seen the attackers' faces. But she did have an idea why they'd come. Though she said she and Ted rarely kept valuables from their business in the house, "being a jeweler … you might someday be a target."
Sitting in the back of a police cruiser before dawn that morning, Corey spoke by phone with Nicolas, then 19, who lived with Edison, then 18, in the city of College Station more than 100 miles away.
The couple made the two-hour drive to the scene, arriving around 8 a.m. They had met in high school when Edison moved to Austin from New Jersey after her parents divorced. Nicolas brought her home in 2016.
"It was an awkward dinner," said Corey.
She said Edison struck her as socially awkward, but before long, she was spending so much time at their house, Corey and Ted actually let her move in. Edison lived with the Shaughnessy family until she and Nicolas moved 116 miles away to College Station.
About two hours after Corey notified Nicolas about the murder, he arrived with Edison at the scene. According to investigators they began acting strangely. When Edison learned they planned to test her hands for gunshot residue, she broke down sobbing.
"That was a major red flag for me," said Sgt. James Moore, who was then a detective for the Travis County Sheriff's Office. "We knew there was something more to this at that point."
Investigators began to suspect even more strongly that they were involved in the murder when they searched the couple's College Station home.
"Once we get into the apartment we're going through it, we're finding ammunition," Moore said.
Though common among gun owners, the ammunition was the same brand and caliber found at the crime scene. And investigators were about to find proof that Nicolas and Edison weren't telling the whole truth about themselves.
"We find a marriage certificate for Nick and Jaclyn," Moore said.
"In all of the conversation you were having … they never said that they were married?" asked Axelrod. "No," Moore said.
Corey said they'd never told her or Ted either. In fact, they didn't tell her the news of their marriage until after the murder.
"I thought it was incredibly stupid," said Corey. "You're too young. This was really dumb."
Trying to be a supportive mother to Nicolas, Corey said she accepted the marriage, but demanded the couple plan and host a proper wedding. She had ample opportunity to supervise that process, because just days after the murder, Nicolas and Edison moved back in with her.
As investigators continued looking into the couple, they discovered suspicious text exchanges on their phones, written just days before the murder. To authorities, it sounded like they were in cahoots and arranging a hit.
"Nick is saying he's 'working on it,'" said Axelrod, paraphrasing one of the texts. "Yeah," said Moore. "And Jackie's response to the text message was, 'do they want 50K or not?'" added lead detective Paul Salo. "And she said, "'we can't afford to pay half before.'"
In another exchange, Nicolas asks Edison to withdraw money from her account: "So if it happens … cash in hand." Bank receipts show Edison withdrew $1,000 from the bank just days before the murder.
Over the next three months, police would come to believe Nicolas and Edison had masterminded the attack and on May 29, 2018, authorities arrested them for criminal solicitation in the murder of Ted Shaughnessy. When Corey read the arrest affidavits, she said her long-standing belief in her son's innocence started to crumble. And she remembered a particularly awkward conversation she'd had with Jaclyn back in 2017.
"She even asked me … one evening when we were getting ready to go out, what would happen to all my jewelry when I was dead," said Corey. "I just chalked it up to bad manners."
Just two weeks after her arrest, Edison began cooperating with investigators – and pointing the finger at Nicolas. She acknowledged he had hired someone to kill his parents, but claimed she didn't know who.
After her cooperation, authorities released Edison on a reduced bond.
Using video from Edison and Nicolas' home security cameras, they then tracked down one of the attackers, 21-year-old Johnny Leon, who eventually acknowledged having been in the Shaughnessys' home the night of the murder. Leon's phone records around that time showed intensive communications with a man named Aerion Smith, age 20, who later confessed to firing the fatal shot. Both were arrested for capital murder.
But Nicolas Shaughnessy and the two men never went to trial. There was a new district attorney in town, Jose Garza, whose office offered them a deal: plead guilty to a reduced charge of murder, avoid a possible death sentence and serve just 35 years. Jaclyn Edison got a deal too. Plead guilty to attempted solicitation of capital murder and serve just 120 days in prison plus 10 years' probation.
Corey thinks Edison's sentence is outrageous.
"It is an outright dismissal of everything that I went through as a victim, she said. "And it's a dismissal of Ted's life."
"Do you understand Corey's frustration?" Axelrod asked Salo. "Absolutely," he replied.
"Is she innocent?" Moore asked rhetorically. "Absolutely not."
"She knew, Amy Meredith added. "She knew what he was trying to do."
In a prison interview during the summer of 2023, Nicolas told "48 Hours" that Edison was a full partner in crime.
"Was this a fifty-fifty thing?" asked Axelrod. "Most definitely," Nicolas replied.
And though Edison denies it, Nicolas told us killing his parents was largely her idea.
Edison declined our multiple interview requests, but when she walked out of jail on Oct. 17, 2023, "48 Hours" producer Jenna Jackson was waiting.
"Nick got 35 years, the hit men got the same," Jackson said to her. "You got 120 days … are you getting away with murder? "No … I think that it's fair, Edison responded. "I think it accurately reflects the level of involvement."
Edison insisted the Shaughnessys are overstating her role.
"Corey and Nick have both told us is that … you are a partner in this murder plot," Jackson told her. "Yeah … I think Nick is, is saying whatever he has to say to kind of clear his name," Edison responded. "Corey is very much in denial about what really happened."
"48 Hours" asked the district attorney for an interview to discuss why his office gave Edison 120 days behind bars, but Garza would not agree to speak with us on camera. A district attorney's spokesperson sent us a statement saying, "Our office takes acts of violence seriously and is committed to holding people who commit violent crimes accountable." The statement also said Edison is on probation for 10 years and if she violates the terms, she faces 20 years in prison.
Corey says a full explanation from authorities would have helped her make sense of something that has always struck her as impossibly wrong.
"So no one's ever explained to you why this enormous disparity … in sentence?" asked Axelrod. "No, absolutely not," Corey replied.
Now, more than five years after the murder and living out of state and under a different name, Corey seems finally to have made her peace with what happened. She hasn't spoken directly to Nicolas since the day of his arrest, but made sure Edison got the message in a video for authorities, played at Edison's plea hearing.
"I'm alive because your plan to have me murdered … didn't succeed," said Corey. "You are a monster. You are evil and everyone needs to know it."