DADvocate

A Fort Thomas, KY woman was charged this past Monday with murdering her husband, the first homicide in Fort Thomas in over 10 years. Fort Thomas is a middle class/upper middle class town in northern Kentucky, close to Cincinnati, OH.

Sympathy immediately flows for the woman to the extent that the victim's own father solicits an attorney to defend her.

Attorney Dennis Alerding said the woman’s father-in-law asked him to defend her in court.

"I asked this man is that what you want to do and he said, ‘Yes, Cheryl is a good mother, a good wife, a wonderful person, and I want to help her and there's got to be some explanation,’" Alerding said.

Friends told News 5 nothing seemed amiss when they saw the couple Sunday morning at Saint Thomas Church, but police said they were called later that afternoon to a domestic dispute at the house.

A family friend told News 5 he sometimes heard the McCaffertys argue in the background as he spoke by telephone to their teenage daughter.

Yes, there must be "some explanation" that justifies the woman's actions. As we all learned many times, most recently in the Mary Winkler case, when a woman murders her husband something must be wrong. She's mentally ill, abused, etc. She's never simply a bad person or monster like men are when they murder their spouses.

And, God forbid, a husband should ever argue with his wife. That's absolutely a capitol offense. Since police had been called to the house over a domestic dispute but murder charges were sill forth coming, I wonder what the nature of the dispute was.

Sure enough, Cheryl McCafferty pleaded "not guilty" to the murder of her husband and the claims of abuse have already started.

“They were just picture perfect and you would have never known,” said family friend Kelly Hergott, whose husband coached Knothole baseball with Robert McCafferty. “You would have never in a million years known what was going on, and we still don't. We still really don't know.”

Police said Robert McCafferty died as the result of a single gunshot wound to the head, and a police report indicated that Cheryl McCafferty told investigators she shot her husband in self-defense.

Cheryl McCafferty is a 43-year-old Cincinnati Enquirer account executive. She was taken to Saint Luke Hospital East for evaluation for several hours before being driven to the jail on Monday.

Hergott said she spoke to her last week and everything seemed fine.

"Both of our husbands were out of town and she told me she didn't know how I did it with my husband gone so much,” Hergott said. “Bob was gone quite a lot, but not as much as mine and we just talked about life and raising kids."

Hergott said she wished she had known her friend was in trouble.

"It just breaks my heart that if she, if they were both hurting this way, that they couldn't reach out,” she said,

There seems to be a lot of sympathy for the perpetrator. I don't recall ever seeing that kind of sympathy for a male perpetrator since Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge in Chappaquiddick.

The prosecutor says the motive in unknown and there were no reports of abuse.

"At this point in time, all evidence sent to the grand jury is consistent with the one shooter, ... that being Cheryl McCafferty," Porter said.

Porter said he could not explain why the killing happened: "We know what occurred, but why it occurred is another issue."

Even if detectives never uncover a motive in the investigation, Porter said he is confident of a conviction.

Even though investigators returned to the McCafferty home Tuesday to remove items from the daughter's bedroom, Porter said the mother is the only suspect. Items taken from Molly's room included a broken picture frame containing a photo of her and her father and a card her father sent her.

Porter said there is no evidence to support a statement made by the sister of Cheryl McCafferty that she was a victim of physical abuse.

"We don't have any physical evidence at this time that there was any domestic abuse," Porter said, adding that no one from the McCafferty family has contacted his office to share any information they might have about past abuse.

A Fort Thomas lawyer that the family retained Thursday said Robert McCafferty's "extended family and friends are devastated and greatly upset by the desperate, reprehensible smearing of Bob's excellent reputation."

"The McCafferty family vigorously objects to this case being tried in the media or through gossip, rumor and innuendo in the community," lawyer David Bender said in the statement.

Other than a 911 call the day before the shooting to report a domestic issue between the couple, Porter said there are no law-enforcement records to indicate domestic abuse.

Cheryl McCafferty, an Enquirer advertising account executive, and her son met officers half a block from the house. They told officers everything was fine, and no arrest or police report was taken.

No evidence of abuse, no problem. Why would a woman lie about abuse? To get away with murder? Never!

Cheryl McCafferty is not a male dominated woman stuck in a house without outside contact. You can see that she is an advertising account executive for the Cincinnati Enquirer, the regions largest newspaper with a circulation of over 100,000. Having been an advertising account executive at a newspaper for a short time, I know that they have contact with dozens of people each day.

Finally, the victim's family came to his defense. I waited several days to blog on this in order to learn more of the facts. There is such a thing as justifiable homicide but this doesn't appear to be one, except, possibly, to militant feminists.