7 Disturbing Facts About Convicted Murderer Sheila Davalloo's Deadly Love Triangle
Her story will be featured in a special episode of Oxygen true crime series, 'Snapped.'
Oxygen Who is Sheila Davalloo?
In 2002, Davalloo was a medical researcher in Pleasantville, New York, living with her husband Paul Christos. Unbeknownst to her husband, Davalloo was also carrying on an affair with her coworker, Nelson Sessler.
Later, prosecutors claimed she was obsessed with the other man.
Davalloo was not content to carry on her secret affair with her lover, especially not after she found out that he intended to leave her for another woman. Rather than accept the end of the relationship, she turned the love triangle into a deadly affair when she killed the rival for Sessler's affections.
Not content with continuing to cheat on her husband, she allegedly tried to kill him, a crime for which she has been incarcerated since 2008.
Now Oxygen will feature her story with a special episode of long-running true crime series "Snapped."
"Snapped: Behind Bars — Sheila Davalloo" airs on December 1 at 6 p.m., and will feature journalist and crime writer M. William Phelps, who wrote the book "Obsessed" about the Davalloo story, as well as forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland.
In the meantime, here's what we know about Sheila Davalloo's deadly love triangle.
1. Who is Sheila Davalloo?
Shelia Davalloo was born in Iran in 1969. Her family moved to the United States when she was a young child, according to her profile on Murderpedia.
She attended college at SUNY Stony Brook where she majored in biochemistry before going on to graduate school at New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York.
She was married to her first husband Farid Moussavi when she was at grad school and that was also where she first started her pattern of cheating on a spouse. She allegedly met Paul Christo in school and began an affair with him. She and Moussavi divorced and she married Christo.
After graduation, she took a job at Purdue Pharma as a pharmaceutical researcher and moved to Stamford Connecticut.
2. Her affair with Nelson Sessler
It was at Purdue Pharma that she met Nelson Sessler.
The Stamford Advocate reports that the two colleagues began an affair sometime in 2001. At the time, Sessler was also dating another Purdue Pharma employee named Anna Lisa Raymundo. He decided he wanted to get more serious with Raymundo and broke things off with Davalloo.
At trial, he later testified that Davalloo seemed amenable to ending their relationship and even called it just "a summer fling."
By 2002, Sessler and Raymundo had moved in together.
3. She was also convicted of killing Anna Lisa Raymundo
Davalloo didn't actually move on from her affair with Sessler a gracefully as she pretended to. Though he was not aware of it, she continued to resent Raymundo and on November 8, 2002, went to her apartment when Sessler wasn't home.
Once inside the apartment, she brutally beat Raymundo before finally stabbing her nine times in the neck and chest, according to Monsters and Critics.
Davalloo attempted to clean up the crime scene — and herself — before leaving the scene and going to a nearby restaurant to use a payphone to call 911. She pretended to be a neighbor of Raymundo reporting a disturbance inside the apartment. Police arrived to find the woman dead.
Police initially suspected Davalloo but lacked evidence to pursue her as a suspect. They were thrown off the trail even further when Sessler didn't mention her. He later testified that he had shared the names of two other ex-girlfriends as people police should interview.
The Stamford Advocate noted that he didn't hand over Davalloo's name because he didn't think her mental health was at all questionable.
4. Davalloo's obsession grows
After Raymundo's death, Davalloo used the opportunity to resume her affair with Sessler.
In court, he testified that she started out comforting him in the aftermath of his girlfriend's brutal murder, never dropping any hints that she had committed the crime. She also didn't drop any hints that she was married. She told Sessler that she and Christo were divorced and she even went so far as to hide his belongings when Sessler visiter her at home.
While Sessler still thought of the relationship as fairly casual, Davalloo was planning how to get her husband out of the way and get more serious with Sessler.
5. The attempted murder of her husband
Perhaps feeling murder had worked out well for her once before, she decided to kill her husband in March 2003.
She convinced him to play a sex game where she tied him to a chair and blindfolded him, according to Murderpedia. While he was thus incapacitated, she stabbed him twice with a kitchen knife. Christo didn't die and Davalloo tried to convince him that she had stabbed him by accident. She even took him to Westchester County Hospital to get medical treatment, but once they were in the hospital parking lot, she stabbed him again, this time in the chest.
Somehow, he survived his injuries and Davalloo was arrested and charged with attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon.
Davalloo waived a jury trial in favor of having a judge rule on her crimes. Her lawyers argued she was emotionally troubled and didn't really mean to hurt her husband.
Nevertheless, she was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in New York State prison.
6. The evidence against Davalloo
It would take five more years for Davalloo to be charged with Anna Lisa Raymundo's murder. She was formally charged in November 2007, but she did not stand trial until 2012.
When she finally got to court, she represented herself, while the state called a dozen witnesses to testify about Davalloo's obsession with Nelson Sessler. Sessler himself testified about their relationship and shared letters Davalloo had written to him after being arrested for attempting to kill her husband.
it was only then he become aware of the depths of her feelings about him.
"I had no idea she was obsessed," Sessler said. "We never had that kind of relationship where we shared the word love. It was completely left-field for me."
The main piece of evidence tying her to the crime was DNA taken from the sink in Raymundo's home where Davalloo had tried to wash her hands after the beating and stabbing.
7. She received both 25-year and 50-year sentences
On April 27, 2012, Davalloo was found guilty of killing Anna Lisa Raymundo and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
According to the terms of her sentence, she has to finish her 25-year stretch at the New York prison before she can begin serving her prison term in Connecticut for the Raymundo murder. Her combined sentences sent her to prison for 75 years. She will be behind bars until 2079.
Davalloo would be 110 years old when released if she lives that long.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. Her work has been seen at Ravishly, Babble, Scary Mommy, The Mid, Redbook online, and The Broad Side. She is the creator of the blog Stay at Home Pundit and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.