Xanthos/News
In an exclusive interview, Barbara Sheehan told the News that her abusive husband 'probably would have killed me.'
Her husband kept hundreds of bullets and 11 knives in his nightstand. He carried a gun in his pocket and threatened to kill her family and "go down in glory" if she reported him.
His forensics expertise would let him kill her and get away with it, he told her - and he punched her, kicked her and held a gun to her head.
For 18 years, Barbara Sheehan says, she put up with abuse from her ex-cop husband Raymond, until one day last February, when he terrorized her for the last time, and she shot him dead while he shaved.
"I think he probably would have killed me . . . he was just totally out of control by then," Sheehan, 47, told the Daily News in an exclusive interview as a grand jury weighs murder charges against her.
In a shaky voice, her hands wringing a tissue, Sheehan painted a picture of the classic battered wife, and graphically described the final fight of her 24-year marriage to the retired NYPD crime scene unit sergeant.
On Feb. 17, the day before she shot him 11 times with his guns in their Howard Beach, Queens, home, they visited their son, Raymond, at his college in Connecticut.
"We got in the car and hadn't left the parking lot and he punched me in the nose," she recalled, because she refused to go to Florida with him. She bled the whole way home, and he took her to St. John's Hospital in Queens.
"I was in triage and he was outside in the car, and he called me on the cell," she said. "He said he had bullets in his pockets, two guns on him and if a police car pulled up, he'd know I told them, and he would find my father and my daughter and go down in glory."
She left the hospital before treatment.
She said her husband woke her up the next day and threw her out of the house in the rain. He said he wouldn't let her back in until she agreed to go to Florida with him, but she was afraid to go because during their last vacation, in July, 2007, he attacked her, she said.
Sheehan fled to her friend's house, but then went back home because she was "afraid not to."
Sheehan and the friend had a coded message to make sure Sheehan was okay. The friend called the house and Sheehan's cell phone twice and left the coded messages. When Sheehan didn't call back "she called 911 . . . she thought he killed me," she said.
But when cops responded to the house, they found Raymond Sheehan, 49, dead on the bathroom floor - not Barbara.
The unassuming public school secretary was marched out in handcuffs and the murder became more shocking because of the secret it exposed.
Raymond Sheehan's colleagues portrayed him as a nice guy.
She'll likely be indicted soon, her lawyer, Michael Dowd, said. He advised her to not appear before the Queens grand jury investigating the killing.
A short woman with light blond hair and dark blue eyes, Sheehan was clad in an orange peasant blouse as she spoke in Dowd's office after a brief court appearance last week. Her nails were polished peach; she wore no jewelry.
She is free on $1 million bail after spending more than a week at Rikers Island, where, she says, "I was safe . . . no one hurt me or yelled at me."
She was 17-year-old Barbara Henry, born and raised in Howard Beach, when she met Raymond Sheehan, then 19, at a party at Our Lady of Grace Church, where his brother was a priest.
She was 22 and he was a rookie cop with the NYPD when they married.
"He came from a decent family. I thought he was nice," she said. "He had a short temper."
They had a daughter, Jennifer, and then their son. After his birth, the temper got worse. He'd push her, knock her down, kick and punch her. He'd apologize and she'd forgive him.
"I cared about him also," she said. "He told me the police would never believe me. When I tried to call 911, he'd grab the phone and beat me with it. He said an order of protection is a piece of paper and paper doesn't stop bullets."
Sheehan pulled her hair away from her forehead to show where she got stitches last summer while they were in Jamaica on vacation.
"He held my hair, and was hitting my face against a cinderblock wall," she said, halting her words, crying and breathing hard. She took a tissue out of her purse. It had a Christmas pattern. "Rudolph tissue," she said with a nervous laugh before wiping her eyes.
Ammunition and knives found in the nightstand of retired NYPD crime scene sergeant Raymond Sheehan. He told his wife his forensics expertise would let him get away with anything.
"I told the hotel people I fell in the bathroom," and he took her for medical help.
"It was one of the worst attacks, and the point when I started to speak about it," she said.
She told a friend at work, and her husband's brother and his wife. "She gave me a number to call [for domestic violence help], and they told me to put aside money to leave him," she said.
Sheehan saved $1,600 and carried it with her everywhere, slipping it under the mattress at night, she said.
Then on Feb. 16, he told her they were going to Florida, and the final fight began.
Nowadays, "I'm at peace, no heart palpitations," she said. "I'm getting counseling, and the children aren't worried all the time.
"I feel bad about what happened," she said softly. "But I don't feel bad he's not here."
