The elderly Manhattan woman who killed her granddaughter’s mother before taking her own life did so as part of a harebrained and premeditated plot to give her son full custody of the 4-year-old girl, new court documents show.
The disturbing case also reveals harrowing details of what life was like for the victim’s parents, Marisa Galloway, after the gruesome murder-suicide that claimed the life of their daughter.
Identified as Kathleen Leigh, 65, a terminally ill former Chicago parole officer fatally shot her daughter-in-law, a 45-year-old special education teacher who shared custody with the shooter’s son, Zachariah Reed, last month on a Manhattan street before killing herself.
The victim’s parents, Nancy and John Galloway, have now filed an emergency court petition alleging that Reed fled to his “multi-million dollar home” in Chicago with his granddaughter Lili under the pretext of “mourning” Leigh’s death and has banned the Galloways from any contact, including video calls, with the minor.
“It is clear that the mother [de Reed] had a deliberate plan to kill Marisa in order to gain custody of their child,” court documents state.
“Unfortunately, [Reed] has demonstrated an absolute intent to further the same goals as her mother, as she has refused to provide us with any access to Lili for nearly three weeks.”
Killer NYC granny carried out slay-suicide to give son full custody of child: heartbreaking suit: The dlsturbing Manhattan filing also reveals heartbreaking details about what life has been like for victim Marisa Galloway’s parents after the slay-suicide… https://t. co/VtLYNkMjT3 pic.twitter.com/FjUsEtpves
— JPNWMN (@JPNWMN) August 18, 2024
The Galloway grandparents, who live in New Jersey, are asking a Manhattan Supreme Court judge to transfer Marisa’s parenting time to them, negotiated in a 2022 custody agreement with Reed, according to legal documents.
The filing also requests that Reed be required to live in New York City until Lili is 18 so she can maintain a close relationship with her grandparents and her half-sister, Mariel, the 1-year-old daughter Marisa had with a sperm donor, the filing says.
The Galloways currently have custody of Mariel, police sources said.
The victim’s mother, in a harrowing affidavit, revealed the adoring, “hands-on” relationship she and her husband had with Lili as they saw her two or three times a month, often for several nights at a time, when her daughter brought the girls to her home in the Garden State and when they visited Marisa and the infants in town.
“When we didn’t see [Lili]“We talked on FaceTime almost every day,” Nancy wrote in an affidavit.
The grandparents were actively involved in raising the 4-year-old, including changing her diapers and feeding her when she was an infant, and as she grew up, they each had special activities they enjoyed sharing with her, according to the file.
“While Marisa has always been the best parent, we would love to be involved in all aspects of caring for a baby, a toddler, and ultimately the little girl that Lili is today,” Nancy wrote.
Nancy said she feels “strangely uncomfortable” about being forced to file the request, but is worried that Lili will be alienated from her mother’s side of the family if they don’t step forward, the New York Post reported.
The grandmother revealed the story of her daughter’s “tumultuous relationship” with her son-in-law since they separated and their “contentious” custody battle.
He also claimed that the couple broke up before Marisa became pregnant, but said their relationship ended “driven by the mother’s interference.” [de Reed]”.
The couple had lived together until she “was forced to move… because [Reed] on July 25, 2021 because Marisa feared for her safety,” the affidavit says.
The parents ultimately reached a custody agreement regarding Lili on Nov. 4, 2022, in which the mother would have her nine out of 14 nights, with the other nights being Reed’s time with the girl, according to court documents.
Galloway and Reed also agreed that the two would live within the five boroughs of New York City until Lili completed high school, unless the two agreed otherwise or a court ordered it, the filing said.
The custody agreement had a clause specifying that the terms of the custody were “binding” on the estates and executors of Marisa and Reed if anything were to happen to them, the lawsuit explains.
“On July 26, 2024, all of our lives changed forever,” Nancy wrote heartbroken.
That day, Marisa — a former volunteer track coach at Fordham University and a board member of the Central Park Track Club — packed her bags and loaded Mariel into her Honda Civic to spend five nights with her parents in New Jersey. She was going to pick up Lili from her father’s house before leaving town, court documents say.
But the killer grandmother, Leigh, approached Marisa as she was loading something into the trunk and shot her once in the back of the head and again in the back before taking her own life.
Leigh had been terminally ill with cancer and had been living with her son in her East 79th Street apartment, where Lili would also stay for a time while Reed was visiting.
Before the horrific crime, Leigh wrote a seven-page letter “to the police” describing how she felt Marisa was trying to take Lili away from her father and saying she suspected her daughter-in-law was abusing her granddaughter, despite child services having cleared the mother of two inquiries started by Reed and accounts from friends and family that Marisa was nothing more than a loving mother.
“He took the boy’s mother to make his son happy… it’s shocking,” a police source said of Leigh just after the murder-suicide. “I’ve seen a lot of s**t, but this is biblical s**t.”
The slain woman’s mother said in court documents that she and her husband have asked Reed “numerous” times since the horror to speak to Lili, worried about how she is doing after the loss of their mother and concerned that the sisters need to comfort each other, but the father has not let them even see her on video calls.
“We have no idea how he is [Lili]not even of what [Reed] “has told Lili about her mother,” the court documents say. “This is beyond unacceptable and must be corrected immediately.”
The grandparents say they are committed to staying at Marisa’s East 86th Street apartment during Lili’s weekday visits. She also demands that the older sister have video calls with her younger sister, Mariel.
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