Mom back in custody after contacting daughter

Thu., Aug. 5, 2004

By John Craig johnc@spokesman.com

A Medical Lake woman who stabbed her 8-year-old daughter to death in September 1999 has been charged with violating a court order by talking to her surviving daughter.

Sharon L. Curry, 46, was ordered to have no contact with her surviving daughter and son after she was acquitted of first-degree murder by reason of insanity.

Curry told Spokane County sheriff’s officers she stabbed her daughter with a kitchen knife while the two were seated in a car in the driveway of their Medical Lake home. Curry also stabbed herself, puncturing her lungs.

According to court documents and state Department of Corrections officials, Curry called a relative who paved the way for her to call her 22-year-old daughter, Jamie Diemert, in mid-June. Curry called Diemert several times over three days, and both women reported they talked amicably for hours.

The conversations were reported to police in Kent, Wash., where Diemert lives. Curry was charged in Kent Municipal Court with violating a no-contact order, a gross misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail.

Curry appeared in court on July 15, and a Kent judge ordered her to undergo a competency evaluation at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake. She remains in custody at the hospital, pending another court appearance on Aug. 17.

Once the Kent charge is adjudicated and Curry serves any jail sentence that might be imposed, she will be returned to Eastern State Hospital for an evaluation of whether she should be released again. A Spokane County Superior Court judge will make that decision.

Now-retired Spokane County Superior Court Judge Richard Schroeder released Curry from Eastern State Hospital last summer when doctors said she was no longer suffering from the psychosis that caused her to kill her daughter, Jessica.

Until she was taken back into custody, Curry had been living at the Opportunity Hall group home at 10506 E. 10th. As she will be for the rest of her life, Curry was under the supervision of Eastern State Hospital, the state Department of Corrections and the Superior Court.

Corrections Officer Timothy Johnson reported in May that Curry had “made satisfactory adjustment to her living situation,” that she was completing counseling sessions as required and that tests showed she was drug-free.

Sheriff’s investigators said at the time of Curry’s arrest that she had abused illegal drugs, but Curry claimed in a lawsuit that she had been prescribed too high a dosage of Adderall, a prescription drug used to treat attention-deficit disorder.

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