Eurydice Eve speaks with Sarah Gerard, the author of CARRIE CAROLYN COCO as well as Sunshine State, the novella Binary Star, and the novel True Love. The Carolyn Bush true crime story is the modern face of femicide : a young woman doesn’t need to be married or romantically linked to be murdered by her domestic live-in. Before she was brutally stabbed to death by her roommate in 2016, Carolyn Bush was a 25 year old poet and a founding member of the nonprofit reading group Wendy’s Subway in New York City. She believed in astrology & studied at Bard College student, as did her killer, Render Stetson-Shanahan. She was a friend to many, including Sarah who gathered her text messages, emails, blog posts, poems, essays, social media, marginalia and interviewed many of her loved ones recollections of her for this book.

Render Stetson-Shanahan admitted to getting drunk and “smoking weed” with his brother before the incident. He also admitted that Bush was speaking on the phone when he asked her, “Guess what?” before he began stabbing her to death. “It was a horribly disturbing case,” said Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz. “The knife sliced into her back and neck, puncturing her heart, lungs and a major artery.” The murderer, Render Stetson-Shanahan, 29, avoided second degree murder charges in Carolyn Bush’s brutal murder in the Ridgewood apartment they shared, because his defense attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma painted a picture of Stetson-Shanahan as a “kind and gentle” man, who “went crazy” the night he killed Bush because of a “marijuana induced hysteria” or psychotic break. The gruesome story made national headlines because the killer is the son of New Yorker cartoonist Danny Shanahan and of Janet Stetson, the Director of Graduate Admissions at Bard College. Queens prosecutors said Stetson-Shanahan was aware of his actions the night of the stabbing assault but Supreme Court Justice Richard Buchter rendered a verdict of guilty of manslaughter in the second degree. The verdict carries a five to fifteen year sentence which means that Stetson-Shanahan could be let free for time already served with good behavior.

For more on Sarah’s work, go to https://sarah-gerard.com @SarahNumber4

For more on Eurydice’s work, go to https://Eurydice.net or https://SpeakwithEve.com or https://youtube.com/@EveEurydice. @EurydiceEve.

Please support this podcast at https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/speaksex/support or donate at https://www.paypal.me/Eurydice. We are 100% listener supported.

Enjoy.