The headboard of the bed in which Cheryl McCafferty shot her husband to death, a blood-soaked mattress and pillows, a bloody t-shirt and the Colt .38 she used to kill him were displayed publicly on Friday by police.
They were among 36 exhibits of physical evidence entered during McCafferty's murder trial in February and opened up to the public Friday afternoon by the Fort Thomas police.
The police decided to display evidence from crime now that the trial is over and the 44-year-old wife and mother waived her right to appeal in return for parole eligibility in just three years.
McCafferty was sentenced in March to 18 years in prison for killing her 44-year-old husband in June 2007 as he slept in their Madonna Drive home.
On the morning of June 25, 2007 Fort Thomas police were summoned to the McCafferty home after a woman called 911 around 8:15 a.m. saying "my husband was trying to kill me and I killed him."
Prosecutors said Cheryl McCafferty was $50,000 in debt on credit cards and had allegedly forged her husband's checks before the deadly shooting. They said she was obsessed with helping her daughter start a modeling career against her husband's wishes. That obsession may have helped fuel the mounting credit card debt which according to testimony climbed $30,000 over seven months.
The defense team sought to build a case of self defense, arguing that Cheryl McCafferty was the victim of violence at the hands of her husband which had grown "increasingly worse" over the last two years.
In testimony Cheryl McCafferty said Robert had pistol whipped her the night before the shooting, thrown her into a closet and shot at her and then held a gun to her head during the night time hours just before the early morning shooting.
"You need to die," Cheryl testified her husband had told her or else he would kill the kids.
In what she described as a "night of terror," Cheryl testified she slipped the gun that her sleeping husband held to her side away from him and eased it out from under the covers and then shot him as he moved up towards her.
"I shot him. I didn't aim. I didn't mean it. I didn't plan it. All I knew (was) I had to stop him," she testified.
After only three-and-a-half hours of deliberation on March 9 the Campbell County jury hearing her case found her guilty of first degree manslaughter.
