Feds: Campaign of harassment preceded Wilmington courthouse killings

WILMINGTON - They claimed Christine Belford molested her own child. They organized a digital campaign to impugn her, posting videos on YouTube and creating a website to smear her. They hired a private eye to watch her, all while spreading rumors that she was trying to sell her three daughters and poison her ex-mother-in-law.

That is how a federal indictment made public here Thursday described the actions of Belford's ex-husband, his sister and his parents in the years before Belford, 39, was slain Feb. 11 in the lobby of a Wilmington courthouse.

Her killer was her ex-father-in law, Thomas Matusiewicz, 68. Authorities say he killed Belford and her friend Laura Mulford before trading gunfire with police and turning the gun on himself.

The indictment said Belford was subjected to harassment and stalking by her ex-husband, David Matusiewicz, 45, along with his parents, Thomas and Lenore Matusiewicz, and his sister, Amy Gonzalez.

In announcing charges of interstate stalking and cyber-stalking against David Matusiewicz - who has been jailed since the Feb. 11 shootings for a parole violation - along with his mother and sister, a federal prosecutor described the courthouse killing as the final event after years of "systematic torment" that the Matusiewicz family inflicted on Belford.

"This was an orchestrated scheme to intimidate and harass Christine Belford," said David Weiss, acting U.S. attorney for Delaware.

Belford and David Matusiewicz had a troubled history. They married in 2001 and had three children, but divorced in 2006. Matusiewicz lost a custody dispute to Belford. As Matusiewicz eventually admitted in court, he kidnapped the children in 2007 and took them to Nicaragua for nearly two years, where they lived in a cramped, filthy trailer.

In 2009, Matusiewicz was arrested and the children were returned to Belford. Matusiewicz, sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to kidnapping and bank fraud, was paroled in 2012.

And after his arrest, according to Thursday's indictment, Matusiewicz and his parents and sister began "waging a multipronged campaign designed to surveil and disseminate false and defamatory information" about Belford.

Between 2009 and 2013, the indictment said, the Matusiewicz family continually alleged that Belford had sexually abused one of her daughters, a claim found not credible in family court during custody hearings.

Along with creating a website and posting videos to spread the allegations, the defendants wrote to the schools and church of the children, according to the indictment, and elsewhere alleged that Belford had tried to poison Lenore Matusiewicz and had talked of selling the children.

The Matusiewicz family hired a private investigator to monitor Belford, the indictment said, and followed her activity on Facebook.

In 2011, the indictment said, Belford wrote an ominous e-mail to her lawyer.

"David has nothing to lose at this point, he has lost everything," she wrote. "He may allow me to survive to suffer. I may survive long enough to watch the girls be harmed. I may even go missing. All of this could be possibilities."

This past February, the indictment said, David Matusiewicz drove from his Texas home with his parents to Delaware for a hearing with Belford in family court. His father left a note for Matusiewicz's sister in Texas, instructing her to protect his guns.

"They will be your only freedom in the coming years under what was once my gov't," the note said in capital letters, according to the indictment. "When gov't takes your grandchildren away it ceases then being your gov't."

On Feb. 11, when Thomas Matusiewicz killed Belford and Mulford, injured two police officers in the ensuing shootout in the Wilmington courthouse lobby and took his own life, David Matusiewicz was on another floor of the building.

The maximum penalty for the charges levied Thursday is life in prison. David Matusiewicz is in custody for violating parole. Lenore Matusiewicz and Gonzalez were arrested Thursday in Texas, prosecutor Weiss said.

The children are being cared for, he said, though he declined to say where.

He said that the courthouse slayings haunt him.

"When an incident like this happens that involves a federal probationer," Weiss said, "you can't help but wonder whether there was more you could have done."