“It’s completely a circumstantial case,” Steven Howard, an attorney representing Peggy L. Shores, said Thursday in Rutland County Superior Court during his client’s arraignment on a charge of second-degree murder in the death of David Shores, 54.
The case against Peggy Shores, he added, is built on “assumptions” and there is nothing to show that she ever held the gun or pulled the trigger setting off the fatal shot.
“They never tested my client for gunshot residue,” Howard later said to reporters outside the courtroom. “They never tested my client to show that she actually discharged the weapon.”
Prosecutors claim the forensic evidence points to Peggy Shores, the only person in the home other than her husband at the time of the shooting Dec. 11.
Shores, 51, pleaded not guilty Thursday. Judge Cortland Corsones agreed to a prosecutor’s request that she be held without bail pending a hearing in early March.
If convicted, Shores faces 20 years to life behind bars.
“The State believes defendant shot Mr. Shores when he was at a distance from her and potentially a flight of stairs below her,” Rutland County State’s Attorney Rosemary Kennedy wrote in a motion seeking to hold Peggy Shores without bail.
“The state has no evidence that self-defense or a struggle occurred,” the prosecutor added. “As such, defendant is a risk to the community.”
According to court records, the couple had been married for 38 years, and police had been called to the home at least six times for reports of arguments or 911 hang-up calls. No charges were filed as a result of those incidents.
A day after David Shores’ death, a police search of the home found several pounds of marijuana, and there is evidence that Peggy Shores may have been selling, Kennedy wrote in her motion.
The murder charge against Peggy Shores follows a police investigation that culminated Wednesday with her arrest. Howard said his client has cooperated with authorities and was not expecting to be taken into custody Wednesday. Instead, the lawyer said, Shores had been planning to go out to dinner later that evening.
“You went through everything they asked to, and then you’re plucked off the street and thrown into jail and the media finds out before your attorney does that you’ve been arrested,” Howard said. “It’s very shocking for this woman.”
Peggy Shores has contended that her husband accidentally shot and killed himself while walking up stairs from their home’s cellar and carrying a loaded .44 Magnum revolver, according to court records.
She called 911 around 7:30 p.m. seeking medical attention for her husband, who was bleeding at the bottom of the stairs, Vermont State Police Detective Sgt. Angela Baker wrote in an affidavit.
Peggy Shores, in an interview with police, said her husband was bringing the gun with him up the stairs after he told her he found it loaded in the basement, the affidavit stated.
She told police she had been watching him but then dropped a towel, and when she bent to pick it up, her husband took a step onto the stairs and tripped, Baker wrote.
Her husband, Peggy Shores told police, had been carrying the gun in his right hand, and his finger was not on the trigger. Police said the gun was later found to the left of David Shores’ body, on the floor.
An autopsy, conducted by Dr. Steven Shapiro of the state medical examiner’s office, showed that David Shores suffered a gunshot wound to his upper left side below his collarbone.
Shapiro said it appeared the shot, which had a downward trajectory, came from a distance because there was no contact wound. Also, the doctor said, the gunshot was not instantly fatal, as it didn’t strike the heart, meaning that David Shores was alive for a “time duration” after the shot.
In a later interview, when Peggy Shores was asked why she didn’t offer aid to her husband, she told police that she heard him “take his last breath” about 5 seconds after the gun went off.
A forensic exam of the T-shirt David Shores was wearing showed no pattern of gunshot residue, Baker wrote in the affidavit.
Test firings of the revolver revealed it would have left a “pattern of residues” to a maximum distance of 48 inches to 72 inches, the detective wrote. Also, according to the affidavit, due to David Shores’ arm length and direction of the shot, it was determined that the maximum distance from which he could have shot himself was 27 inches.
Police said that Wednesday, while executing a search warrant at the Brooklyn Road home, they tried to re-create scenarios given the measurements, shot trajectory and other evidence.
That exercise showed, the affidavit stated, the trajectory “is consistent” with the shot being fired from the upper stair area, including the living room floor area.
Two rows of supporters filled benches in the courtroom Thursday behind Peggy Shores for her arraignment. Those supporters, Howard said later, included members of both sides of the family.
“Love you,” one woman shouted to Shores as she was led away to jail.
