Town note
Marydel was originally known as Halltown.
about 0:06:43The story
Marydel is a tiny town on Maryland's eastern border, in Caroline County, where the state meets Delaware. It covers 0.08 square miles and had 136 residents, down from 143 in 1990. Many residents are Guatemalan Maya, some of them Mam speakers.
In 1964 she met Lauren Peterson, a Navy SEAL, and they married on September 10, 1965. They had three children, Lauren Jr., Charles and Helen. Lauren was abusive from the start: while they were dating he threw her onto the hood of a car and beat her in front of her sister, and when she was pregnant he kicked her in the stomach. He told her he wanted to mess her face up so nobody would look at her, and for years she covered her face when he beat her. They were married for 26 and a half years, and she said he beat her two or three times a week.
The family moved constantly for his military career. In March 1982 she went to court after he shoved her out of the front door and twisted her arms; she said he had talked about people he assassinated in the Navy and threatened to kill her. On October 14, 1983, drunk, he spoke of sexually abusing Helen as he had Anne Marie. Lauren entered a veterans administration drug and alcohol programme in Philadelphia, but the abuse resumed. A Virginia judge told them not to return to his court for a year; less than a week later Lauren knocked her unconscious off a bar stool. He retired from the Navy in 1987, and in 1989 they moved to a rural property in Marydel.
In August she became convinced he was having an affair, and Charles saw Lauren push her to the floor and choke her. In September, in front of Charles, Lauren screamed that he would kill her and take her head off. From September 14 she carried it every day in a vest sewn with a pocket for the weapon and another for ammunition. A C&P Telephone employee, Thomas Phelps, came to install a line and listened while she showed him the gun pocket. On November 11 Lauren threatened to rape her because she would not sleep with him. On November 16 he said he was going out to kill deer, which she took as a threat.
On November 17, 1991, Lauren left for church at about eight in the morning and came home early. He fed the animals and lit a fire near the cages. In the bathroom she had a vision of a large jar on her head containing all the terrible things her husband had done to her. She came out with the gun, screamed that he was not going to kill her, and shot him repeatedly. She reloaded and fired again, then drove to Anne Marie's house and called the police.
Maryland State Trooper John Bollinger responded.
Her public defender considered a battered spouse syndrome defence, which would have been the first use of it in Maryland, but decided the abuse was too old to qualify. He ran a not criminally responsible defence instead, with imperfect self-defence as a fallback.
James could find no record of a retrial.