Sheila Davalloo, 42, is representing herself in court. She appealed to the judge to close the proceedings to cameras because she said she couldn’t question the witnesses and make her case properly in their presence.
The judge, however, denied her request to remove cameras from the courtroom because they gave her “performance anxiety.”
Davalloo has been charged with beating and then stabbing to death Anna Lisa Raymundo, who was dating a man that Davalloo was in love with, although she was already married to another man—the one she later stabbed.
Davalloo was in love with Nelson Sessler, who had been seeing both women. When Sessler’s relationship with 32-year-old Raymundo intensified, he stopped seeing Davalloo. Prosecutors say that prompted her to kill Raymundo at her condominium in Stamford, New York, on Nov. 8, 2002. They say she then placed the 911 call that alerted the police to Raymundo’s death.
Six months later, Davalloo attempted to kill her husband, Paul Christos, who was blindfolded and handcuffed during a game in their home in Pleasantville, New York. She stabbed her husband twice, then took him to the hospital and stabbed him again along the way.
She was convicted in 2004 for the attempted murder of her husband. She is serving a 25-year sentence for that crime.
In 2008, Stamford police charged Davalloo with the murder of Raymundo. She now faces 25 to 60 years in prison if convicted of murder.
The prosecution has a case based largely on circumstantial evidence. That includes DNA belonging to Davalloo and Raymundo found mixed in blood on a bathroom sink. There are also computer records showing Davalloo visited websites about criminal forensic investigations in the days following Raymundo’s death.
The prosecution says it will call a voice recognition expert who will say that the voice on the 911 call alerting police to the homicide was Davalloo’s.
The court file outlining the evidence also cites a lock-picking kit that Davalloo bought and work records that show she took a two-hour lunch break at the time Davalloo was killed.
Dan Schorr, who prosecuted Davalloo for stabbing her husband but has nothing to do with the current case, said of Davalloo, “She’s not the average murderer.… She’s a professional. She’s well-educated and she’s smart.”
Davalloo was born in the United States, but spent most of her childhood in Iran before returning to the United States with her family. She received a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Stony Brook University on Long Island and a master’s in public health from the New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York.
