NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- The woman accused of killing her husband, a retired sergeant with the NYPD, says she tried to leave him a number of times but never went through with it because he said he would kill her and it would be "the perfect crime."Barbara Sheehan spoke publicly for the first time about her tumultuous marriage. The 47-year-old mother of two grown children is charged with killing her husband, Raymond, in their Howard Beach, Queens home as he shaved February 18. She claims it was self defense.
1010 WINS EXCLUSIVE: Carol D'Auria Interviews Barbara Sheehan
Raymond Sheehan was a 20 year veteran of the NYPD.
"He worked in what was called the crime scene unit and he said he could commit the perfect crime and that's what he would do...that no one would ever find me," Barbara Sheehan said from the dining room of her home.
"I did try to leave a few times but he would threaten me, he would take his gun out. He would put his gun to my head...more than once, a loaded gun, too," Sheehan explained. "He threatened me and my family," she said.
The Sheehans were married for 24 years. She said after the birth of her second child her husband began to verbally abuse her. She said he called her "trailer park trash" and "stupid" because she never went to college. She claims that before long her husband began to physically abuse her and that the abuse got worse with each passing year.
Last summer, the couple vacationed in Jamaica and that's when he pulled her by the hair, then pushed her face into a concrete wall, according to Sheehan. She said she needed stitches to close the wound on her forehead and scalp and that her husband insisted she tell everyone that she fell. She claims that over the years her husband also broke her nose, broke one of her fingers and gave her several black eyes. One time, he threw a pot of spaghetti sauce at her, she said.
Sheehan claims that the violence began escalating even more last fall and continued through the holidays. In February, he wanted her to go to Florida with him and she refused. Sheehan says she was determined to stay home, but her husband wouldn't accept that. On the morning of Feb 18, she shot him and called the police.Sheehan is out on $1 million bail.
