JUST IN: Execution Of Teresa Lewis —For Killing Her Husband And Stepson In A Murder For Hire
We begin tonight with something that hasn’t happened in Virginia in nearly a century. >> On September 23rd, 2010, Teresa Lewis became the first woman executed in the United States in 5 years and the first woman executed in Virginia in 98 years. She was 41 years old, a grandmother, and she had not pulled the trigger on either of her victims.
The two men who did pull the triggers, the men who walked into that house, raised the shotguns and fired. They were still alive, sitting in prison cells with life sentences, breathing. Teresa Lewis was strapped to a gurney in the death chamber at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia, while her stepdaughter, the only surviving member of the family she helped destroy, watched through a two-way mirror.
And at 9:13 p.m., she was gone. What put Teresa Lewis in that chamber? What kept her there? Despite global outcry, despite John Grisham, despite the European Union, despite 7,300 clemency appeals, is a story about greed, manipulation, a $250,000 life insurance policy, and a legal system that could not agree on one fundamental question: Who was really in charge? This is the Teresa Lewis case.
Teresa Wilson was born on April 26th, 1969 in Danville, Virginia. She grew up poor. Both of her parents worked in a textile mill, the kind of small southern town where the mill was the economy and the church was the community. Teresa sang in church as a girl. That much is known. At 16, she dropped out of school and married a man she met at that same church.
They had one daughter together, Christie Lynn Bean. The marriage didn’t last. After the divorce, Teresa turned to alcohol and prescription painkillers. Her own mother-in-law described her as not right. She drifted, dozens of low-paying jobs, no real direction, a life that looked like it was just moving from one thing to the next.
By her own admission, years later from a prison religious service, she wrote, “I was doing drugs, stealing, lying, and having several affairs during my marriages. I went to church every Sunday, Friday, and revivals, but I didn’t open my Bible at home.” Teresa Lewis was, by most accounts, a deeply troubled woman, impulsive, dependent on others, and searching for something she couldn’t name.
In the spring of 2000, she found work at the Dan River Textile Mill, and that’s where she met Julian Clifton Lewis, Jr. Julian was her supervisor. He was 49, recently widowed, and still mourning. His wife of nearly 30 years had died just 4 months earlier. He had three children, Jason, Charles, and Kathy.
Teresa moved quickly. By June 2000, she and her teenage daughter, Christie, had moved into Julian’s home. They married shortly after. On the surface, a widow and a troubled woman finding stability, a second chance for both of them. That surface didn’t hold. In December 2001, Julian’s older son, Jason, was killed in a car accident.
Jason had a life insurance policy. His father was the beneficiary. Julian received $200,000. He used that money to buy a manufactured home on 5 acres in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. It was supposed to be a fresh start. Land, space, security. What it became was a crime scene. Then in August 2002, something shifted the entire equation.
Julian’s younger son, Charles J. Lewis, C.J., was called up for active duty with the United States Army Reserve. He was 25. He was preparing to deploy to Iraq. Before he left, C.J. did what many soldiers do. He took out a $250,000 life insurance policy. He named his father as the primary beneficiary. He named Teresa as the secondary beneficiary.
For Teresa to collect that money, both men had to die. That’s where the story turns. In the fall of 2002, Teresa Lewis met two young men at a Walmart in Danville. Their names were Matthew Jesse Shallenberger, 21, and Rodney Lamont Fuller, 19. She began sexual relationships with both of them. Teresa gave the men $1,200 to purchase firearms and ammunition.
Their first attempt to kill Julian Lewis failed. So, they tried again. On the night of October 30th, 2002, the night before Halloween, Teresa prayed with her husband before bed. Then she got up. She unlocked the back door to their mobile home. She put the couple’s pit bull in a bedroom so the dog wouldn’t interfere.
She walked to the kitchen and waited. Shallenberger and Fuller came through the unlocked door in the early hours of the morning. Shallenberger went to the master bedroom and shot Julian multiple times as he slept. Fuller walked down the hall and shot C.J. five times. When Fuller realized C.J.
was still alive, he shot him again. Teresa stood in the kitchen through all of it. When the shooting stopped, she walked to where her husband lay dying. She went through his pockets. She took his wallet. She split the cash with the two men. Then she waited. 45 minutes passed before she called 911. When law enforcement arrived, Julian Lewis was still alive, barely.
Before he lost consciousness, he told them something that would become the most haunting detail of this entire case. “My wife knows who done this to me.” He died shortly after paramedics arrived. CJ Lewis was already dead on the floor. Teresa’s first story was a home invasion, unknown intruders. She knew nothing. Investigators didn’t believe her.
They turned to Schallenberger. He refused to talk. They went back to Teresa. Under pressure, she broke. She admitted there had been a second shooter, Fuller, who Schallenberger had brought in to help. Fuller was taken into custody and cooperated immediately. He confirmed the plan, confirmed the murders, and told investigators it had all been Teresa’s idea, that she set up the killing to collect the life insurance.
All three were arrested. Teresa was charged with capital murder, two counts. Schallenberger and Fuller were charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Both men reached plea deals in exchange for cooperating against Teresa. Teresa’s own daughter, Kristy Lynn Bean, had known about the plan and said nothing. She would eventually serve 5 years for that silence.
In May 2003, Teresa Lewis pleaded guilty to two counts of capital murder for hire. She did not go before jury. Her attorneys made a strategic decision. They believed she had a better chance with a judge. The judge in this case had never sentenced anyone to death before. That calculation proved catastrophically wrong. At sentencing, Judge Strauss looked at the evidence and said, “There is no question in the court’s eyes that she is clearly the head of this serpent.
” He sentenced Teresa Lewis to death. Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller, the men who had physically walked into the house, raised the shotguns and fired, each received life sentences without parole. Teresa Lewis, who had never fired a weapon, was sentenced to die. That disparity would define the controversy that followed for the next 7 years.
Three separate fault lines ran through the Teresa Lewis case from the moment the sentence was handed down. The first was the sentencing disparity. Teresa Lewis received the death penalty. The two men who committed the actual killings did not. That fact alone drew scrutiny from legal experts, advocacy organizations, and eventually the international community.
Her attorney, James Rocap, put it plainly, “If she was not the mastermind,” and he argued she was not, “then it was grossly unfair to impose death on her while Shallenberger and Fuller received life.” The second fault line was her IQ. Multiple evaluations placed Teresa’s IQ at approximately 70 to 72. In the 2002 Supreme Court case Atkins versus Virginia, the court ruled it was unconstitutional to execute someone with intellectual disability.
But the court left it to individual states to define where that line was drawn. Virginia’s threshold required a formal diagnosis of mental retardation. Governor McDonald would later note that no medical professional had formally concluded Teresa met Virginia’s statutory definition. She was two points above the threshold.
Rowcap pointed out that Schallenberger had an IQ roughly 40 points higher than Teresa’s. He argued that the right person, an intelligent, calculating man looking for money, had found exactly the right target. A woman with limited intellectual capacity, dependent on male approval, and vulnerable to manipulation. The third fault line was Schallenberger himself.
In November 2004, a private investigator for the law firm representing Teresa made contact with Schallenberger in prison. What happened next was remarkable. Schallenberger admitted the murders had been his idea. He said he had targeted Teresa deliberately. He told the investigator, “Teresa was in love with me.
She was very eager to please me. She was also not very smart.” He began signing a written statement to that effect. He signed the first two pages. Then he stopped. He tore off the pages he had signed, the pages with his signature on them, and he ate them. He was never going to testify. But there was also a letter allegedly written by Schallenberger before his suicide in 2006.
In it he wrote, “From the moment I met her, I knew she was someone who could be easily manipulated. Killing Julian and Charles Lewis was entirely my idea. I needed money, and Teresa was an easy target.” Defense attorneys submitted this as new evidence. Courts declined to act on it. Schallenberger was dead. The signed pages of his confession were gone, digested in a prison cell in 2004.
What remained was an unsigned letter, disputed provenance, and a woman sitting on death row. The debate went global. The case drew worldwide attention and sparked major opposition to the execution. Author John Grisham, Amnesty International, the European Union, and activist Bianca Jagger all urged clemency. While more than 7,300 people appealed to the governor to spare her life.
The case became so internationally known that even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad referenced it publicly. Adding to the controversy, former prison chaplain Lynn Litchfield, who had known Teresa for 6 years, stated that she firmly believed Teresa did not deserve to be executed. On the other side, prosecutors and the judge who had sentenced her remained firm.
The evidence at trial showed Teresa had initiated contact with the killers, paid for the weapons, unlocked the door, put the dog away, waited in the kitchen, and rifled through her dying husband’s pockets before calling for help. She had planned, enabled, and profited. The triggermen had cooperated with the state.
The state’s position, Teresa Lewis was not a passive victim of manipulation. She was the architect. Teresa’s legal team filed a petition for executive clemency on August 25th, 2010. On September 17th, 2010, Governor McDonnell denied it. His statement was precise and final. Having carefully reviewed the petition for clemency, the judicial opinions in this case, and other relevant materials, I find no compelling reason to set aside the sentence that was imposed by the circuit court and affirmed by all reviewing courts.
An appeal was then filed directly to the United States Supreme Court requesting a stay of execution. On September 21st, 2010, two days before her scheduled death, the Supreme Court declined to intervene. Two of the three female justices on the court voted to halt the execution. They were outvoted. Every avenue was closed.
Teresa Lewis spent part of her last day visiting with family, her spiritual advisor, and her attorneys. In the days leading up to her execution, her attorney James Rocap said she had been laughing, singing, and praying. Not for herself, for the people around her. We thought that we were supposed to be helping her, he said, while she was actually helping us.
She had written a message to her fellow inmates before her final day. It read, “Man wants me to die, but I’m not worrying over this. I’m trusting Jesus.” On a website set up by her supporters, Save Teresa Lewis, she posted a final thank you for everything they had done on her behalf. Then September 23rd, 2010, arrived.
Teresa Lewis was escorted into the death chamber at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarrett, Virginia. 14 corrections officials were present in the room. Witnesses described her as fearful. Her jaw was clenched. She glanced tensely around the room before she was bound to the gurney with heavy leather straps. She asked if Kathy was nearby, Kathy Clifton, her stepdaughter, the daughter of the man she had arranged to be killed, the sister of the other man she had arranged to be killed, was in an adjacent witness room, separated from Teresa by a two-way
mirror. She could see Teresa. Teresa could not see her. Teresa’s last words were directed toward that mirror. “I just want Kathy to know I love you and I’m very sorry.” The drugs were administered. Her feet moved once. A guard placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. At 9:13 p.m. on September 23rd, 2010, Teresa Lewis was pronounced dead. There were no complications.
She was 41 years old. She was the first woman executed in the state of Virginia in 98 years. The last had been a 17-year-old girl named Virginia Christian executed in the electric chair in 1912. She was also the first woman executed in the United States in 5 years, since Frances Newton was put to death in Texas in 2005.
Also, for a murder-for-hire case involving her husband and children. For her last meal, Teresa Lewis requested two fried chicken breasts, sweet peas with butter, German chocolate cake as her first choice or apple pie as her second, and a Dr. Pepper. Nothing extravagant. Southern comfort food. The kind of meal that might have been served at a church potluck in Danville, Virginia in 1985.
After Teresa Lewis was executed, the debate did not quiet. If anything, it sharpened. Three questions were left unanswered when Virginia administered that lethal injection and they remain unanswered today. The first, was the sentence proportional? Two men who fired the weapons received life. The woman who orchestrated the plot, or was manipulated into it, depending on who you believed, receive death.
That asymmetry is not unique in American capital cases, but it is rarely so stark. The second, did her intellectual capacity matter? At an IQ of approximately 72, Teresa Lewis sat just above the line Virginia had drawn. The Supreme Court in Atkins had said intellectual disability was a bar to execution, but Virginia’s standard required formal diagnosis and no evaluator had provided one that satisfied the state’s threshold.
Two points, a different state or a different scoring and the constitutional protection might have applied. The third, was Matthew Shallenberger the real architect? He manipulated the evidence in real time, eating his own signed confession. He killed himself in 2006, taking whatever certainty he possessed with him.
His alleged letter claimed full responsibility. Courts never weighed it as sufficient. The man who may have engineered the entire scheme is buried and the woman he may have used as a tool died in a Virginia execution chamber. Kathy Clifton, the lone survivor, lost her father and her brother on October 30th, 2002. She was present when Teresa died.
Whatever closure, if any, she found in that witness room, no camera captured it. It was hers alone. Teresa Lewis’s attorney released a statement after the execution. He called her a beautiful, childlike, and loving human spirit whose death, he said, represented what he called a broken system of justice. The state of Virginia offered no statement of regret.
The sentence had been imposed, affirmed through every level of review, and carried out. The machinery of capital punishment does not offer second thoughts. Teresa Lewis did not dispute that she was involved. She pleaded guilty. She said she was sorry, not as a legal strategy, but in letters, in interviews, in the last word she ever spoke.
What remained in dispute, and what courts, governors, and legal scholars could not fully resolve, was where responsibility truly rested. Was she the head of the serpent, as the judge declared, a cold, calculated woman who used sex and money to have two men murdered for a $250,000 payout, or was she something else? A woman with a limited mind, a dependency on male approval, and the catastrophic misfortune of meeting someone far more calculating than herself? And so, I’ll leave it with you.
The trigger men got life. The woman who never fired a weapon was executed. Knowing everything you now know, the IQ, the confession that was eaten, the letter, the disparity, where you stand on what happened in that Virginia courtroom in 2003, leave your thoughts in the comments below.
