March 13, 2009 in City

Stark’s abuse called ‘very severe’

Expert testifies on defendant’s behalf

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When Shellye L. Stark gunned down her husband in an early-morning confrontation, she was reacting to a marriage so rife with abuse that she suffered from battered women’s syndrome, the clinical disorder’s leading researcher said Thursday.

“The pattern of abuse was very severe,” said Dr. Lenore Walker, a national expert on domestic violence. “Her plan might have been naïve, but I think her learned helplessness may not have allowed her to think it through.”

Walker, a self-described feminist psychologist who’s testified at hundreds of trials, interviewed Stark in fall 2008, more than nine months after the Dec. 9, 2007, death of Dale Robert Stark, 48, in the South Hill home he shared with the couple’s teenage son.

Stark’s first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder trial lasted past 8 p.m. Thursday in Spokane County Superior Court to accommodate testimony from the Florida-based professor, a key witness to Stark’s self-defense claim.

Walker’s testimony followed a detailed description by Stark, 47, of abuse she said were suffered at the hands of her husband, whom she says forced her into prostitution to support his gambling habit and beat and sexually abused her regularly.

There were periods of peace, she said, including when she earned a bachelor’s degree from Washington State University in 2000 and taught math and science for a year at Garry Middle School in Spokane.

She told the jury about two assaults by Stark that she says killed two babies – one stillborn and one who died shortly after birth. One of the babies was named Nikita – a name she said Dale later made her take on for her work as a prostitute. That was in 2006; she told the jury Wednesday she’d worked in the industry since the first part of her marriage.

But about halfway into 2007, she met Brian Moore on a Web site devoted to prostitution and started a relationship, she said Thursday.

“I was able to meet sincere and genuine people,” she said, describing Moore as an “astute man when it came to me – he saw me as a woman who did not want to be doing what I was doing.”

Moore, who was listed as a state witness but couldn’t be located to receive a subpoena, had a business that helped women escape prostitution, Stark said.

His help led her to travel to Spokane from California to rework what she said was an unfair marriage settlement. Stark said she planned to move her things from the home at 1620 S. Maple St. Dale Stark didn’t like that and began threatening to kill her and to tell her family that she was a prostitute, Shellye Stark said.

She decided to pre-empt him and broke the news to her family in the days before the killing.

She planned to cook dinner with her sister, Stark said, and she’d been chopping onions with a knife Dec. 7 when she learned her sister had hit a moose on Highway 2 and was in the hospital. She returned the next day, hours before Dale Stark arrived and reached for the same knife after learning of the restraining order, Shellye Stark said.

She told the jury he was charging at her with a look of rage that she recognized from years of beatings. “It was not a walk. It was not a run,” Stark said. “He was charging at me.”

In a heated cross-examination from Deputy Prosecutor Mark Cipolla, Stark left unanswered the question of how her husband of 23 years had bullet wounds in his back if she shot him as he charged her. “Because that’s where the bullets landed, Mr. Cipolla,” Stark said.

She said she barely remembers firing the gun and had no idea how many bullets hit her husband.

The defense is using Walker’s testimony to explain why Stark fired the final bullet into her husband’s leg after he collapsed on the floor from four bullet wounds.

She said under questioning from defense lawyer Russell Bradshaw that all she remembers was her husband moving toward her on the ground as she tried walking past him to get to the front door.

“I wanted him to just go,” she said. “I never meant to kill him.”

What some may see as an overreaction to a threat is a common reaction from a woman who suffers from battered women’s syndrome, Walker said.

“She had trauma triggers that increased her level of fear,” Walker said. “… In my opinion, she was terrified of him.”

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Three comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  braniac on March 13 at 11:55 a.m.

  A couple of things I want to respond to in this article. Dale Stark did “NOT” make her name their child that passed, “Nikita”. She came up with that name herself. “Jennifer” was the second name to which she named the other child that passed. She called herself Nikitajennifer. Dale did not make her. I noticed that the second name was not mentioned in the article. Personally, I think it is freaking sick and demented that she would even use her dead babies names for her Hooker name. Just freaking sick!!!! The other thing here, Brian Moore did “NOT” help these women on this website that he met Shellye Stark on. His so-called Legal Firm, which he DID NOT have a license to do business as, “Fathers Justice, Father Rights”, and other names it went by, he used every and any angle to rip families apart w/ what knowledge he claims he had. First of all, most of his clients were Women, and the majority were hookers. He had very few men as clients to which most of them disliked Brian Moore. He took upon these cases w/ these clients with the intentions to rip the other parties apart. He would make matters look worse than they really were and make sure that “His” client took the other for everything that they were worth, and make up lies along w/ restraining orders that made them look really bad. Seen it done on many many occasions. Brian was in business for himself, plus most of his clients were propsitioned w/ sex in exchange for his services to which in return made some of them believe that they were in some kind of a relationship w/ them. In the end, it was only about who he can manipulate and score with. He had many believeing he was like a GOD and their Savior. The “Anitchrist”
  One client particular had no money @ the time she needed his assistance so he flat out told her to stand on a corner and hook herself out, get some money and come back when she has has cash in hand. She was pretty offended by that comment he made to her, therefore she told the Attorney @ the time who represented clients for the office, she told her what brian had said to her, and thats when the Attorney stopped doing work w/ Brian Moore. She was disgusted and wanted nothing to do with such a man of this magnitude. HE WAS NOT OUT TO HELP ANYONE BUT FOR HIMSELF PEOPLE!! HE IS A LYING SON OF A BITCH! HE HAS SHELLYE SO BRAINWASHED!

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  jessecorgatelli on March 18 at 7:24 p.m.

  I do not know alot about the case!But i thought in the United States there was the term of self defense.I do not understand why she was charged for him charging at her.If he had made her do all of those things than he got what he deserved.But if he did not i guess she got what she deserved.

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