DIANE Staudte was a 49-year-old wife and mother of four when her husband and son died five months apart.
But when her daughter fell ill, the family pastor suspected Staudte was to blame.
Who is Diane Staudte?
Diane Staudte lived in Springfield, Missouri with her husband Mark and their four children.
Diane was trained as a nurse, worked closely with the church, and was the breadwinner of the family while Mark was a musician and looked after their children.
That all changed on Easter 2012 when Mark died suddenly from what doctors thought to be natural causes.
There was a ring of blood around his mouth, but his death was not investigated and his body was cremated.
According to ABC News, Diane Staudte took the $20k she received from Mark’s life insurance policy and moved the family to a nicer house in a different neighborhood but only five months later, devastation struck again.
Her 26-year-old son Shawn, died without warning.
Her pastor later told investigators he thought it unusual that she appeared to be throwing a party when Diane Staudte held her husband’s funeral and didn’t hold a funeral for her son at all.
But when Diane Staudte’s daughter became ill in June 2013 and was admitted to the hospital, the pastor made an anonymous call to the police.
Springfield police detective Neal McAmis told People in 2016, “He (the pastor) talked about Diane’s lack of emotion when Mark died. He thought Diane’s reaction after Mark died was odd.”
McAmis said the pastor told him that he and Mark had been relatively close and once a month would meet for coffee and catch up, but he didn’t know of any reason why Mark would die.
“But then, after Shaun, a healthy young man died, that’s when he saw a total lack of emotion and really started to become suspicious,” McAmis said.
The pastor, Jeff Sippy, revealed himself for the first time years later and in a sitdown interview for 20/20 to be aired on February 25, 2022, he talked further about his suspicions.
“There was nothing in me that believed that it was of a natural cause,” Sippy said in his first time speaking publicly about the Staudte case. “I didn’t believe that he died of a stroke. A heart attack. Or in his sleep. I just didn’t.
“There’s nothing scientific. There’s nothing professional about my observation. But my first words were ‘no way.’ He did not just die.”
Was Diane Staudte to blame for the deaths of her husband and son?
Police spoke with an anonymous caller, later identified as Pastor Jeff Sippy, who told them he believed Diane Staudte killed her son and her husband and was doing the same to her 24-year-old daughter Sarah.
He said he believed Sarah’s death was imminent, and police rushed to the hospital to speak with the doctors and staff.
They were told that Sarah had complained of flu-like symptoms but she was also suffering from liver and kidney failure, consistent with poisoning.
“I ended up speaking with a doctor that was taking care of Sarah as well. He had told me that they performed several tests,” McAmis said during his interview on the upcoming 20/20 segment.
“They couldn’t figure out what was going on. And he said that he was suspicious that it was a possible poisoning case.”
Investigators looked into the deaths of Mark and Shawn Staudte and found they both had the same mark of a ring of blood around their mouth at their time of death.
The Springfield Police Department brought in Diane Staudte and her daughter Rachel Staudte for questioning.
Interrogation tapes were obtained by ABC News and showed Diane Staudte initially denying any wrongdoing.
“I didn’t hurt my kids and that’s what I feel like you’re insinuating I did. I may not be the best mother in the world, but I didn’t hurt my kids,” Diane told McAmis. “When Mark died, it was actually a relief. I just don’t tell people that. I don’t know what else to say.”
But when she was read her Miranda rights, she admitted to putting anti-freeze in her husband’s drinks and doing the same to her son.
She said she was tired of her husband and wanted him out of the picture, and when McAmis asked why, she said, “By then, I hated his guts. He would throw things at me. He would throw things at the kids. I guess I’d just had enough.”
Her son, Shawn, suffered from a history of seizures and autism, and Diane Staudte said he was a “significant burden” to her.
“Shaun would be interfering with whatever I would do,” Diane told McAmis. “He was more than a bother … more than a pest.”
She had begun poisoning her daughter with antifreeze because she had significant college debt she didn’t want to pay.
When police questioned Diane’s daughter Rachel, she denied any wrongdoing but after she was read her Miranda rights and a page from her personal diary, her story changed.
The diary entry was dated June 13, 2011, almost a year before Mark Staudte died. “It’s sad when I realized how my father will pass on in the next two months,” her diary entry said.
“… Shaun, my brother will move on shortly after. … It will be tough getting used to the changes but everything will work out.”
McAmis said in the 20/20 interview, “Rachel said that her mother was the only one that understood her. They could relate to each other … Rachel was the golden child, and it was just going to be those two.”
Where is Diane Staudte now?
Diane Staudte and her daughter Rachel were convicted in 2015 for the murders of Mark and Shawn Staudte and the attempted murder of Sarah Staudte.
Rachel Staudte was given a plea deal of life in prison with the possibility of parole if she testified against her mother.
She took the deal and was sentenced in 2015 for the second-degree murder of Mark and Shawn Staudte.
Diane Staudte pleaded guilty to the first-degree murders of her husband and son and was later sentenced in 2018 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
