To some, celebrating a new year can be symbolic of a clean slate, a fresh start, a chance to take a step back & gain perspective on how we’re spending our days. We might reflect on the previous year & take some time to clear both mental & physical clutter as we set new goals for the upcoming year. In this case, a family’s world was turned upside down when they learned of the sudden & tragic death of their loved one that came within less than an hour of welcoming the new year.
It was December 31, 2011, New Year’s Eve & less than one hour from ringing in the new year of 2012. 28-year-old Ashley Fallis was having a great time dancing & smiling in the living room of her Colorado home with her husband, Tom. They were hosting a party & everyone was having a fantastic time. Sadly, shortly after midnight, the brand new year began with absolute tragedy when Ashley, the mother of three, was dead as a result of a single gunshot wound to the head. Tom insists that Ashley killed herself while those who know & love her are firm on the fact that she would have never taken her own life.
Ashley was a spunky woman who was full of energy. She had a generally happy, positive disposition & loved to laugh & joke around. Soon after graduation, Ashley married her high school sweetheart, her mom serving as her matron of honor shortly after Ashley graduated high school. The couple had two daughters together, Madelynn & Jolie, but soon after the girls were born, the marriage fell apart & they divorced.
When Ashley wasn’t working as a respiratory therapist at a rehab hospital, she was busy raising her two daughters. She surrounded herself with her family & loved ones, she loved life & she was exceptionally close with her mom & her adoptive father, Jenna Fox & Joel Raguindin. Ashley & her mom were each other’s best friend.
In April 2007, Ashley met Tom Fallis, a man who seemed responsible & ready for a family. It was the fact that he was so family oriented & wanted a large family that drew Ashley to Tom. However, Jenna & Joel were a little wary of Tom & what seemed to be a controlling personality. They were also concerned by just how quickly Ashley & Tom’s relationship progressed. Within months of dating, Ashley realized she was pregnant. Two weeks after their son, Blake was born, the couple got married & settled in Evans, Colorado, about an hour north of Denver. Tom began working as a Corrections Officer with the Weld County Sheriff’s Office while Ashley worked as a respiratory therapist. Jenna & Joel saw Tom’s job as perfect for someone who had an ego & thrived on telling others what to do. Tom went on to adopt Ashley’s daughters after their biological father gave up his parental rights.
Because Ashley’s family was very bothered by just how quickly everything moved for her they actually tried to sit down & talk her out of it. Joel reflected that he’d waited about seven or eight years after starting his relationship with Jenna before he adopted Ashley & her brother. They were troubled with the way that Tom seemed to have the need to constantly be right. The couple argued a lot & Tom presented himself as an aggressive person. Jenna felt that her new son-in-law was a very insecure person who wanted total control of her daughter. She also believed that Tom viewed her as a threat since he could see just how close she was with Ashley. Jenna seemed to be the one person Tom wasn’t able to isolate Ashley from.
When Blake was only a toddler, he was diagnosed with hydrocephalus, a condition where fluid builds up in the brain. The condition is life-threatening & Blake required frequent surgeries. His medical needs put an extra stress on the family & required Ashley’s constant attention. Jenna recognized that her daughter was extremely strong & focused on the challenge of helping her son. She even became the Director of the Colorado chapter of the Pediatric Hydrocephalus Foundation. Ashley even appeared before the U.S. Congress in 2011 in hopes of securing funding for the condition.
Blake’s chronic health issues put a massive stress on Ashley & Tom’s marriage to the point that in the summer of 2011, Ashley was considering divorcing Tom. As 2011 was coming to an end, Tom insisted that they were doing better, they were going to counseling & Ashley had been taking medications. According to Tom, their relationship was on the mend. Jenna acknowledged that her daughter was overwhelmed since she had so much on her plate, but she was not depressed.
Shortly before New Year’s Eve, Ashley took a pregnancy test which showed a positive result. This was a shock since she’d had a tubal ligation, but Tom felt that the positive test had come at the right time since they were doing so well. He indicated that as a precaution, Ashley stopped taking her prescribed medication for anxiety because of her pregnancy.
Sadly, earlier on the day of their party, Ashley started bleeding & believed that she was suffering a miscarriage. Despite their loss & the fact that Ashley felt down, they decided to go on with their planned party that night & 15-20 people attended, including Tom & Ashley’s parents. Tom & Ashley’s kids were also there & at the time, they were 9, 6 & 4.
Those present indicated that Ashley was in great spirits during the party, talking, laughing & dancing. As the evening wore on, Tom was said to have gotten worked up & began talking loudly & cursing about fantasy football. Jenna asked him to please keep it down for the sake of the kids & Tom only grew angrier & said F**k those kids. He elaborated that they often woke him up so he didn’t need to be quiet.
As the party progressed, tension between Ashley & Tom began to rise to the surface. As the party was winding down, at about 12:30 am, Tom overheard Jenna’s brother offering Ashley marijuana. Tom was adamantly against Ashley getting high as he reminded her that her employer required regular drug tests & as her family was getting ready to leave the house, Tom flew into a rage. He began cursing & yelling & told Ashley that she didn’t have a brain in her f**king head. Tom also screamed at Ashley’s family as he said, F**k everybody, I wish you all would die. They sat stunned & watched as Tom went into the primary bedroom & slammed the door.
After the outburst, the remaining guests gathered their things to leave. Ashley followed her parents outside to say goodbye at about 12:40 am & she told them she was planning to host a Superbowl party & hoped they could come. Jenna indicated that her daughter was not upset since the aggressive behavior was fairly typical for Tom.
Ashley gave her parents hugs & goodbye kisses & stood on the porch waving as they pulled away. This was tragically the last time they ever saw Ashley alive. The only people inside the house at this point were Ashley, Tom, their three children & Tom’s niece & nephew.
According to Tom, Ashley put the children to bed & then came into their bedroom in a defiant mood. She told him that she was going to do what she wanted to do, when she wanted to do it & if she wanted to get high, she would. Her autopsy later proved that she had not smoked marijuana that night.
Tom said that he went into their closet to change his clothes when he heard the sound of a gun being cocked from across the room. He was aware that Ashley kept a .9mm Taurus under her mattress. When he was on his way out of the closet, he saw Ashley behind the side of the bed in the vicinity where the gun was stored & she was crouched down, low to the ground. According to Tom, everything happened very quickly & he asked her what she was doing when he suddenly heard a pop & saw smoke. He said that he ran to Ashley & held her head as he reached up, grabbed her phone & dialed 911.
As the dispatcher picked up, they could hear Tom scream, You’re staying here! You are not leaving me! You are not leaving me! He was frantic & indicated that his wife had just shot herself in the head. The call was placed at 12:50 am, only ten minutes after Ashley’s family had driven away.
Only minutes into Joel & Jenna’s drive, they pulled the car over to talk about what just happened with Ashley’s aunt & uncle, who were also in the car. As they were sitting on the side of the road talking, emergency vehicles sped by in the direction of Tom & Ashley’s house. Joel did a quick U-turn & found a chaotic scene at the house they’d just left. Tom & Ashley’s oldest daughter, who was nine, had sent multiple emails to Joel after her mom was shot. At 12:51 am she wrote, Help!!! At 12:52 am Come here, help! At 12:53 am She got shot.
When Joel & Jenna pulled up to the alarming scene, they immediately called Tom’s mother & told her to come back because something bad had happened. Tom was outside yelling & acting aggressive & as officers arrived, he immediately informed them that he was a Weld County Deputy CO2 & demanded that specific officers come to the scene. He was acting so aggressively that an Evans Officer had to threaten to use his taser.
Jenna & Joel were unable to see Ashley until she was transferred to the hospital with severe brain trauma from a single gunshot wound to the head where she was pronounced dead at 3:44 am. Jenna said that it was incredibly unbelievable to see her child lying in bed with a bullet hole through her.
Evans, Colorado, where Tom & Ashley had been living, was a very peaceful community. According to responding officers, it’s a low-crime area & in the eight years that one officer had been working in Evans, they had dealt with maybe one or two armed robberies.
Despite the fact that Tom told the responding officers that Ashley shot herself, he was brought into the station for an interview, still covered in his wife’s blood, while his parents watched the children. He told investigators that he saw Ashley kneel next to the bed where she kept the gun & shot herself in the head as he was coming out of his closet.
Right off the bat, investigators were suspicious as neighbors told them that they’d heard yelling. One young neighbor, Chelsea Arigo, who lived directly behind Tom & Ashley said she was laying in bed watching TV when she heard an argument between a man & a woman coming from Tom & Ashley’s house. She could hear the male yelling, Your f**king mom.. Your mom.. Your f**king mom.. Answer my f**king question. Then she heard the female voice yelling get off me!
Ashley also had fresh bruises on her legs while Tom had fresh scratches to his torso, something he said happened after he recently shaved his chest. He said he’d never shaved it before & found it to be very itchy so he was scratching his chest a lot. Later DNA testing was done which proved that Tom’s DNA was under Ashley’s fingernails.
Reports indicate that Tom & Ashley’s children were not properly interviewed as professional forensic child psychiatrists were not brought in. When they were questioned by officers, the two older children said that they heard yelling in their parent’s bedroom. 6-year-old Jolie made a startling statement that before the yelling began she heard Dad getting the gun ready & shootin her three times. Because the bedroom door was closed, Jolie didn’t see Tom holding the gun. There was also evidence of only one gun shot vs. three as Jolie indicated to the investigating officers dismissed her statements.
Tom told detectives that Ashley had voiced suicidal thoughts in the past & the miscarriage earlier that day likely sent her over the edge.
Tom denies what the neighbor said & indicates that Ashley never told him to get off of her. They also told him that the location where Ashley had been shot at the back of her head was not a spot where she could have done it herself. Tom adamantly denied that he had shot his wife.
The story back at Ashley & Tom’s house wasn’t fitting with the picture that Tom’s story painted. Investigators found framed pictures in their bedroom that appeared to have been knocked from the walls which indicated a struggle as well as divorce papers sitting on the dresser. There was also a large flashlight on the floor near where Ashley was shot. On top of this, guests from the party told police that Tom had been very angry as the party came to an end & watched as he screamed, I wish you would all f**king die.
After questioning, Tom was released without being charged, something that shocked Ashley’s parents. They were firm on the fact that there was no way that Ashey would have taken her own life & left her children.
Only days after her death, on January 5, 2012, before forensic testing was complete, the coroner ruled Ashley’s death a suicide. She had stopped taking her medications for her mental health issues cold turkey after discovering she was pregnant. Two months later, the case was officially closed.
Jenna was stunned, she knew just how dedicated Ashley had been in regards to Blake’s health issues. Now free of all charges, Tom moved to Indiana with his children so he could attend graduate school. Not only had Jenna & Joel lost their daughter, but now they were losing their three grandchildren. In order to keep their relationship with them, they maintained a relationship with Tom. Joel indicated that their love for the kids outweighed their hatred toward Tom.
Life went on as it must despite the grief over the sudden loss of Ashley, the full belief that she had not taken her life despite that the case was closed & ruled a suicide. As two years passed, it was early 2014 & Joel & Jenna remained convinced that Tom had gotten away with murder. They believed that he killed Ashley in a fit of anger, likely because she was threatening divorce, hence the divorce papers found on the dresser in their bedroom.
It was about this same time when reporter Justin Joseph got a phone call from a source within law enforcement who felt that something about Ashley’s case just wasn’t right. Based on this call, Justin began speaking with neighbors who had initially spoken with police. Then, in April 2014, there was a break in the case when a young neighbor of Ashley & Tom’s, Nick Glover, who was only 15 at the time, told Justin that he saw Tom walk out of the house. As he & his family watched, they ducked under the window sill so he wasn’t able to see them. They watched as he approached his parents & told them, Omigod I can’t believe I did it. After he repeated himself three or four times, his parents, trying to understand what he was saying, asked what he was talking about. This was when Tom said, I shot her.
According to Nick, he had told his story to Evans Police Officer Michael Yates & Yates wrote down his statement. After Justin reported Nick’s story, a sheriff’s deputy who was at the scene came forward to tell investigators that he also heard Tom admit that he shot Ashley.
Nick’s mom, Kathy Glover, told Justin that she’d gotten a call that night from the neighbor who lived behind Tom & Ashley, a teenager named Chelsea Arrigo, who said, Tell me you called police, your neighbor just shot his wife. However, in Yates’ official police report, he wrote that according to Kathy Glover, Chelsea said, Your neighbor just shot herself. This is clearly a major discrepancy. For two years the Glovers believed that their statements had been properly recorded & believed that for whatever reason, the Evans PD just declined to prosecute. They were stunned when they learned in 2014 that their statements had been changed or omitted.
Now it was one person’s word against the others as Yates insists that Nick Glover never told him that he actually heard Tom confessing to his parents. He also insists that Kathy did not say that according to Chelsea, Tom shot Ashley. It was Chelsea that heard Ashley scream, Get off me! For whatever reason, a follow up interview with Chelsea was never held.
Ashley’s family believe that the Evans PD is involved in a cover up to disguise Ashley’s death as suicide vs. homicide. The big question that remains is, why would they want to do this? Chief Brandt within the Evans PD insists that there is no cover up, just some mistakes made by the officers. He acknowledges that they absolutely should have re-interviewed Chelsea. He was also unsure as to why the case was closed while the lab reports were pending.
Brandt cannot explain why the case was closed so quickly despite the fact that there was still a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to foul play. Guests left the Fallis home at 12:40 am while Tom was extremely angry, yelling, cursing & slamming the bedroom door. Not ten minutes later, Ashley was dead. The framed pictures were pulled off the wall, divorce papers were on the desk, neighbors report hearing yelling, Ashley’s legs had fresh bruises & Tom’s chest was scratched. The case was closed despite the fact that lab tests were still pending.
According to Chief Brandt, his less-experienced officers called in the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for back-up & then, later closed their own investigation. Brandt indicates he cannot answer why the case was closed so quickly despite the red flags in the case as he is not in charge of running investigations.
Brandt indicates that he was completely unaware that there were any issues in the ruling of the case until Justin’s report two years later. Because of Justin’s reporting, the case was reopened & a new investigation began which was handled by a larger, neighboring police department in Fort Collins.
Jenna & Joel were thrilled that a fresh set of eyes would be further investigating Ashley’s case. They realized it wouldn’t bring their daughter back, but they hoped it would reveal the truth.
When Justin tried to speak with Tom who was on a return visit to the area, he refused, saying that the case had already been closed.
In an odd twist, despite the fact that two years had gone by, Tom suddenly produced a typed letter from Ashley were she wrote:
Dear Tom… I’m sorry for your pain… I am a failure at everything… I find myself not even liking my children. I do love them; I just can’t take this life any longer.
This typed letter was followed by a handwritten note where Ashley wrote that she was broken & has done all I can.
To Jenna, it made absolutely no sense that Tom hadn’t produced the letters that Ashley supposedly wrote immediately after she had taken her own life.
A grand jury indicted Tom for Ashley’s murder in November 2014, nearly four years after her death. The following day, he was arrested in Indiana. It’s likely by this point Tom believed that the past was in the past & he was free to move forward with his life & his children. After his arrest, the children were cared for by Tom’s parents. Tom was eventually released on bail & not allowed to leave Colorado.
Jenna & Joel felt a tremendous sense of relief that justice was finally taking place. According to the indictment, after the guests left the party, the argument continued between Tom & Ashley & as they argued in their bedroom, Tom grabbed a 9mm Taurus handgun. He held the gun to the right side of Ashley’s head before pulling the trigger. While still in contact with Ashley, he lowered her to the floor, held her head & called 911 as he screamed that his wife just shot herself.
48 Hours hired a forensic animator, Scott Roder, who owns a company called The Evidence Room to determine the most probable scenario as to what happened to Ashley in the early morning hours of January 1, 2012. He took measurements from the crime scene, reviewed all of the available evidence photos & created an animation based on Tom’s version of events. It was clear that because suicide was quickly assumed, no investigation was done. Tom’s version of events omits why the pictures that previously hung on the walls were strewn on the floor, why neighbors heard Ashley’s screams & why the large Maglite flashlight lay on the floor near her body. Scott believed that the flashlight was somehow involved in the incident & referred to the bruises to Ashley’s legs & speculated that Tom could have used it to knock Ashley to her knees before he shot her.
Chief Brandt was unsure if the flashlight was investigated or where it ended up. Scott Roder concluded that there was a 50/50 chance that Tom’s story was plausible that Ashley had taken her own life & it was also possible that he was responsible for shooting her. In the hundreds of cases he has been involved in, Scott said that the appropriate way to handle a case like this was to start with a homicide investigation before determining if it was a suicide, but in Ashley’s case, they started with a suicide investigation & that’s as far as it went.
Tom’s trial began in March 2016 & his defense attorney immediately established her client’s innocence, insisting that Ashley had taken her own life because of the terrible pain inside in which she was suffering. She indicated that Ashley had documented mental illness, was impulsive & self-destructive & because of that, she shot herself in a moment of crisis with her own handgun.
The defense attorney claimed that because Ashley had been drinking heavily on the night of their New Year’s Eve party, paired with the fact that she had just suffered a miscarriage, she was a pressure cooker.
When Ashley’s uncle was cross-examined by another defense attorney, he admitted that there was a history of suicide within their family & both his mother & brother had each died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Ashley’s therapist told the jury that he did not consider Ashley a danger to herself & when he saw her in December of 2011, she did not appear to be depressed or suicidal. Dr. Russell Johnson admitted that he didn’t actually know how many pills or milligrams of Seroquel, which treats schizophrenia, bipolar and/or depression, that Ashley was taking.
When Jenna Fox took the stand, she spoke about the fact that Ashley had been fine throughout the party & it was Tom who had exploded toward the end of the night. He told Jenna & Joel that he hated them & wished they would all die. Then he marched into his bedroom & slammed the door. Despite his outburst, Jenna insists that Ashley was maybe a little embarrassed, but otherwise fine. Before they drove away, Ashley spoke of future plans to host a Super Bowl party.
Next-door-neighbor Nick Glover took the stand & said he clearly remembered that night & the fact that Tom confessed to shooting Ashley to his parents. He said he was 100% sure that it was Tom who spoke those words to his parents as they stood on his driveway. On the other hand, Tom’s parents adamantly deny that their son ever made such a confession.
Nick’s mother Kathy told the jury about the 1 am phone call she received from their neighbor, Chelsea Arrigo, who told her that Tom shot Ashley. However, when Chelsea took the stand, she indicated that she doesn’t even remember the phone call & only recalls hearing some arguing. She does not recall any specific words spoken & denies hearing Ashley scream, Get off me! However, Chelsea does admit that she was intoxicated that night & failed to corroborate the significant statements that investigators say she provided after the shooting.
Chris Graves, a Weld County Sheriff’s Deputy, indicated that he also overheard Tom confess to killing his wife. According to Chris, he heard Tom screaming, I can’t believe I shot her! I can’t believe she’s dead! However, his credibility was questioned since he did not notify his superiors about the statements until two years later after the case was reopened. He admits that this was an error on his part & he didn’t draft a report about what he heard because it was someone else’s case.
The state’s expert, Dan Gilliam, spent 400 hours examining the case. He explained to the jury where Ashley’s head would have had to have been if she shot herself. She would have been bent at the knees. On cross-examination, he admitted that the most probable result of the shot to her head was the result of it being self-inflicted.
However, the prosecution called another forensic expert, Jon Priest, who said that Tom had to have been near Ashley when the gun went off, to the point that there may have even been contact. It’s likely that they were struggling with the gun as it went off which was a completely conflicting theory to what Dan Gilliam believed.
The prosecution was tasked with convincing the jury that without a reasonable doubt, Tom had the gun, held it to Ashley’s head & pulled the trigger. Joel & Jenna were hopeful that the jury would find Tom guilty. After deliberating for only three & a half hours, the jury found Tom Fallis not guilty.
Jenna & Joel were shocked that Tom somehow managed to get away with murder yet again.
Two jurors explained how they came to their verdict & said that the case seemed straightforward & believed that Ashley was in a dire mental state which led her to take her own life. Juror Davana Mijares believed that the couple had an intense argument that night & didn’t think the case should have even been reopened & gone to trial. It’s her opinion that the case was only reopened because of pressure from the media.
Reporter Justin Joseph felt that the police department did not do their job on the night of Ashley’s death & because of that, evidence was lacking that could have solidified a guilty verdict. Thus, he feels that the jury made the right decision because of the lack of evidence.
Regardless of the fact that Tom was deemed innocent, Ashley’s family remain firm on their belief that she would have never taken her own life & left her children behind. Jenna & Joel feel disgusted that their daughter’s feisty, spit-fire personality was portrayed in a negative light during the trial. They insist that Ashley was a passionate person who loved life. They want to make it their mission to preserve their daughter’s memory in her children’s minds. In the meantime, Madelynn, Jolie & Blake remain in Indiana under their father’s custody & Jenna & Joel have visitation rights.
References:
- CBS News: The search for answers in Colorado mom’s shooting death
- Yahoo Entertainment: Mom of three dies from gunshot wound after hosting New Year’s Eve party, but was it suicide or murder?
- CBS News: Ashley Fallis death: A family’s fight for justice
- Westword: Update: Deputy on leave after new cover-up charges in Ashley Fallis murder
- The Denver Post: Children’s custody in contest in case of 2012 Evan’s wife’s death
- CBS News: Death after midnight
