Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised .
some medical mysteries are harder to solve than others,they can take years to unravel.
baffling cases that are often stranger than fiction.
this stroy is exactly that.
it’s surrounds the stoudte family of springfield missouri and a year in their lives that cannot be believed.
the bizarre story begins in 2012 with mark staudte……..
mark was one of the nicest kindest people you could ever meet, very friendly ,very sociable, hilarious, full of life.
mark lived in springfield missouri wtih his wife and his four kids.
there oldest was shaun, he had a form of autism.
sarah was the next oldest ,she had recently graduated from missouri state university and she wanted to be an interpreter.
and rachel,s he was seemed to excel in everything ,her ,mother praised her to the limits,she was also very good musically .
and briana was 10 years old and the youngest of the staudte.
marks wife is diane ,they were married nearly three decades, the4y met at college and they fell in love and they got married.
they were the perfect family.
diane was a insurance adjuster and prior to that she worked in nursing for a long time and she was the primary bread winner of the home, she was also very involved in the lutheran chuch in springfield.
she played the organ at her church and rachel played the flute.
mark was a stay – at -home dad,because sarah and shaun had some kind of developmental disablities and he needed to give that full- time attention to them at home
and with mark staying at home, he was able to pursue his passion in music,mark were in a band called messing with destiny, a local blues band based out of springfield ,missouri .
they played covers of songs like ” let me love you baby” by willie dixon.
he was the lead singer,he also played guitar.
then one day in april 2012 mark gets sick and mark was at rehearsal with his bandmates and he seemed really off.
he was unfocused ,he was stumbling around and he was being a little big of a nuisance to everybody .
he seemed almost drunk,but people hadn’t seen him drinking like that ever.they never saw mark with any alcohol,just a gatorade he always had with him.
he was acting very strange which really alarmed the bandmates but they said “maybe he’ll sleep it off and he’ll fine the next day”.
the next day is mark’s 61 st birthday so he goes to his bandmates charles alexander’s house and he’s again acting very bizarre, acting almost drunk.
charles could see there was something wrong with him,his skin tone was yellow ,it looked like a bad spray tan , and he asked him three times ” let me take you to the hospital” mike said no.
diane says she checks on him several times throughout the weekend to make sure he’s doing okay but according to her, he’s not.
he had been experiencing some flu like symptoms.
he’s sleeping much more than a normal person ,would hardly eating anything and he’s feeling very weak and whenever she would ask him questions he wouldn’t respond.
and she said on that easter sunday mark ended up having a few seizures, for him to have a seizure is alarming ,diane goes to check on him and she finds him unresponsive.
she calls 911.
the paramedics were unable to successfully revive him and they pronounced him dead.
officers noticed one thing about mark, he had an odd ring of blood around his lips that caught their attention.
it was consistent with EMTs or paramedics intubating the patient while trying to save his life.
after mark died diane posted this on facebok.
he was not in fabulous health, a little heavy, may have smoked, he had liver problems, he was diabetic,he wouldn’t quite smoking.
2 veeks later diane held a memorial service for mark and the person who oversaw the memorial was pastor jeff sippy.
pastor sippy had a close relationship with the staudte family, so it made sense for him to officiate the service.
for the people who attended the memorial service ,they said that diane seemed very stoic.
people felt awful for diane, she had just lost her husband now she had to raise the kids on her own , it was devastating.
shortly after he died ,family had him cremated.
and his ashes were then spread over his favorite lake.
mark’s unexpected death wasn’t the end of the trauma for the staudte family it was just the beginnning.
in april 2012 mark staudte became ill experiencingflue-like symptoms and behaving oddly as if he were drunk within days he passes away .
leaving behind his wife diane and their four children, briana, rachael , sarah and the eldest 25 year old shaun.
one possible bright spot in all of this is that after mark died ,diane received a life insurance payout of $20,000, the family moved from a small cramped house for a family of five to a bigger house in a a nicer neighborhood…
if there was anything good to come of mark’s death it was that.
after finding her husband dead ,moving out of that house probably became a priority.
in september diane and the kids has settled into their new house, they were enjoying life
and all of the sudden shaun got sick.
diane said he had flu like symptoms for weeks,he had chills ,he had diarreha, he’s nauseated ,he has headaches and he has a seizure.
but seizures are normal for shaun.
he was born with a lesion on his brain and so he had some seizure disorders as he was growing up, she thought he was fine because he was hydrated and then diane goes to church on a sunday.
and when when she came home she found shaun unresponsive on the bedroom floor to everyone’s shock and horror shaun died …
the medical examiner’s office decided to do an autopsy on shaun due to his age , they found that he had a congenital kidney defect.
they found quite of a bit of brain damage and they’e saying that’s what what caused the seizures and apparently he stopped breathing during one of the seizures.
the official cause of death in shaun’s case was that he had died of seizure based on prior medical issues .
death by seizure is uncommon in adults but for some people living with epilepsy in particular it can occur.
allthough the cause is unknown it can happen when the seizure causes a pause in brathing that lasts too long or an unusal heart rythm.
at this point, everyone was like,” this family has gone through so much”
within 4 months losing two family members, the staudte’s friends and family were just heartbroken.
there was alot of similarities with shaun’s death and with mark’s death both suffered from seizures,both been experiencing some flue like symptoms and there was one other similarity to the two deaths.
just like mark , shaun had a ring of blood around his mouth when he was found dead.
had a connection been made between the two everything would have changed…
by the start of 2013, the staudte family had experienced two traumatic losses in less than a year.
father mark and his son shaun,mother diane was left to raise three daughters.
the eldset 24, year old sarah,22 year old rarchel and 11 year old briana.
and then … another mysterious illness struck the staudte’s.
in june 2013, 280 days after shaun passed away sarah then fell extremely ill,she started to feeling sick , she complained of a little headache ,her stomach, was upset and she threw up a couple of times.
and she starts to just deteriorate, after checking on her several times , diane back and she found out that sarah was unconsious.
sarah’s condition was so bad that she couldn’t walk, that they she and rachel actually carry sarah.
when sarah gets to the hospital she’s not in good shape at all.
the doctors could not figure out what was wrong.
the pH levels were high , she had a brain bleed , her kidneys were failing, her pancreas was failing,they did several tests for symptoms that trelate to sarah’s and it all came back negative.
the doctors really couldn’t pinpoint what it was…
her organs are failing, it looks that sarah like her father and brother will die.
on june 9th 2013 the day sarah went in to the hospital diane posted on facebook , asking for prayers” as my daughter sarah is in critical condition in ICU tonight”.
people wer shocked they couldn’t believe that this family was experiencing such a tragedy yet again.
at this point you have to wonder …
what is going on within the staudte family,is it a medica condition? is it genetics?is it just bad luck?
something is happening to the members of the family. it seems like nobody can explain what’s going on .
but then this springfield police departement gts a call from an anoymous source.
something’s not quite right please , investigate.”
the staudte family had experience two sudden deaths, father mark and son shaun and now daughter sarah was in the hospital in critial condition, leaving diane staudte and her other daughters on the cups of losing yet another member of the family.
then in june 2013, the springfield police get a phone call…
the police departement received an anonymous tip on june 11th a couple of days after sarah had been admitted to the hosptial.
that anonymous tip claimed that the death of shaun and mark and this critical condition of sarah might somehow all be connected .
it was pretty vague ,that they needed to look closer into what was going on with the staudte family.
the springfield police departement assigns detective neal mcamis to this case and he doesn’t think much of it.
detective mcamis decides to go to the hospital to talk to sarah’s nurse to see if there’s is any information he can get from hr about what’s been going on.
the nurse that was in charge of sarah told detective mcamis that diane was acting really odd for a mother whose daughter was fighting for her life.
diane was making jokes with the nursing staff she was was laughting did not take the situation seriously at all .
and she had plans to go to florida and that she was going to go no matter what.
but with both mark and shaun gone and the prospect of loosing a third member of the family,losing that what many people that quickly can cause you to do some weird things .
people grieve differently.
it was obviously something that had to be looked into further,detectives have to figure out what’s going on .
so,mcamis asked diane to come down and and talk.
detective mcamis starts the conversation ,talking about sarah.
detective mcamis asks if anyone would harm sarah ,thinking maybe there’s some enemy out there.
when detectgive started out he did not know where the interview was going to to lead.
obviously he didn’t wanted talk about sarahs condition,he wanted to speak about mark and shaun both and she had mention anything about mark so mcamis casually asked her if she was married.
mcamis is starting to notice a pattern,something is up.
you could tell mcamis is on to somethingbut he doesn’t know that yet
he reviewed and studied the reports from marks death,from shaun’s death the medical examiner’s reports .
and he found the similarities in there deaths ….
the ring of blood around their mouths , the flu like symptoms and that they had both been alleged to have at least one seizure before they died.
he reached out to the initial investigating officers that responded to mark’s death and to shaun’s death.
an officer email back indictaing that after processing the scene and waiting for them to remove the body diane staudte was on the phone talking to multiple peole and stepped over mark’s body several times like it was nothing.
mcamis got some supsicions but at the same time is she a grieving widow , is she a grieving mother that just been through some very tragic catastrophic incidents.
he had to really go at this soft.
he notified her that he’d been in contact with the medical examiner’s office and as it turns out in this case they had kept tissue from shaun’s body, so even though she cremated him there was still evidence.
and she didn’t not know that and mc mannis told her that there was going to be further testing of those.
mcamis just found that was really odd ,he thought , why would you anticipate something being found in there,he realized he had to do whatever he could to try and get it out of diane.
then diane’s story starts to come apart, the twists were not over yet…
is it bad if you argue with your,kids, and tell them you’d be better off if you kill yourself ?”
father and son mark and shaun staudte both passed away in 2012, their death were ruled to be from natural causes
but when mark’s daughter sarah took ill in 2013 with similar symptoms,it raised serious questions was this genetic, could it be something in the water .
detective mcamis had turned to the family’s mother diane looking for answers ,she basically revealed that she wasn’t happy with her home life.
she says that he would lash out verbally, he would drink alot .
we don’t know that any of that is true but that’s what diane told detective mcamis ,when detective started out the interview he was at a distance away from her ,as time went on and his suspicions continued to grow he just moved closer to dianetry to put a little bit more pressure on her.
mcamis was literaly closing in on her and he just kept inching closer and closer to diane.
he got her right where he wanted her .
diane begins to make several admission to detective mcamis ,the first being that she said sarah was taking antifreeze to kill herself.
the moment that she utters the term anti-freeze it had to be a stunning moment for detective mcamis because that had not been in any of the reports ,wasn’t in a toxicology report so this was obviously was a big moment.
and diane continues admissions by saying she knew both sarah and shaun were drinking antifreeze.
detective told diane that both of the knew they didn’t , that diane knew that they were drinking antifreeze because she were giving it to them.
it was at that point when everything unraveled.
diane said what she did with mark is she put a couple teaspoons of antifreeze into his gatorade which he was drinking throughout the weekend.
so when detectives search the staudte home….
in the garagethere sitting on a table was a bottle of antifreeze…
and a six pack- pack of coca cola. it was all right there.
antifreeze is a compound that we put into gasozline to keep it from freezing,the active ingredient in antifreeze is called ethylene glycol.
it’s a very peculiar increcibalby poisonous deceptive form of alcohol.
after you ingest antifreze there’s going to be a period where you feel fine ,then your going to have normal flu like symptoms,you’re going to be nauseated and you might get a headache.
mark’s bandmembers described him as being intoxicated.
antifreeze often gives an appearance of somebody that’s been intoxicated,people will be slur their words staggers when walking.
when you swallow it,it would metabolize to form a lethal crystal and these crystals are depositing one by one into your kidneys .
people also talk about the fact that his skin had yellowed,that’s very classic with kidney damage.
eventually you start having major organ failure….that is going to kill you.
detective mcamis asked diane why she did this and when it comes to shaun ,he was interfering whatever she would do and he was more than a bother.
and then she said she was wanting to kill sarah because she had student debt and she didn’t want to deal with that.
after diane’s arrest her daughter rachel was brought to the springfield police station and an officer breaks the news to rachel about diane’s confession.
when you see rachel crying and upset you feel genuinely bad for her,she lost two members of her family a third one could be about to pass away and she’s left to take care of her little sister all by herself if her mother is put in jail.
diane staudte has confessed to using antifreeze to kill her husband mark and son shaun and trying to kill her daughter sarah,nearly wiping out half the family.
exept 11 year old briana and 22 year old rachel.
but then a piece of evidence is found at the staudte home changing the path of this bizarre tale …
one more time.
diane has just confessed to killing her husband and her son and poisining her daughter .
and police are searhing the house and then detectives find a purple diary.
and it’s an entry in that diary that is super alarming.
there’s much more to the case than detective mcamis ever realized and they know that there’s oone more person they have to speak to.
it turns out in the diary was the plan,the plan to kill mark and then sean and it belongs to rachel.
in it she had written;
it’s said when i realize how my father will pass on in the next two months and how shaun,my brother will move on shortly after and yet, it’s really helpful .
i’m being warned so that i have more time to prepare and cope, also i get to have dads car when he ‘s gone it’ll bel be tough getting used to the changes but everything will workout”
rachel had a dream that they would die.
she says she had a lot of really bad dreams about them dying she talked to her mom about it
diane said “okay well let’s make it happen”
the mother daughter duo planned the deaths of their family members.
rachel said that ,she was okay witith killing off her dad,there was no concern there.
shaun and rachel argued a lot and she still think they could have put him in a assisted living but she said her mother wanted him out.
when diane talked about sarah ,she was very adamant on that sarah was just a burden that sarah needed to be taken care of and by taken care she meant- killed.
rachel also explained that it was her mother idea to use antifreeze because you couldnt taste it .
after rachel’s interview she was arrested right along with diane and she had her purse with her.
investigators found a poem in rachel’s purse.
the poem said:
once upon a time there were six, now there are only three. only the quite ones are left,my mom my little sister and me.”
she also said that the house are nasty after somebody ‘s died in it and she got a lot of nightmares and after shaun died she moved into his room and said it was awful in there.
and there is still another twist…
rachel then told mcamis that briana was next.
rachel said that briana liked root beer and that she wanted just to be her and her mother only because she understood rachel.
one thing to remember is that rachel and diane could have gotten away with this if it had not been for that anonymous tip.
and and as it turns out that anonymous tip came from their pastor jeff sippy.
the same pastor that presided over mark’s funural .
mcamis spoke with him later on about it and he just said that he and diane were close through vchuch but he just was suspicious of the behavior of diane.
rachel decided to turn witness against her mother in exchange for a plea deal for 42 years in prison with a chance of parole.
diane got life in prison without possiblity of parole.
sarah survived some how, miraculously and even though her mother and sister had tried to poison her she went to court and told them that she forgave them.
rachel apologized to her sister ,saying that she was so sorry for what had happened.
when sarah said to diane that she had forgiven her of all the things that she had done diane did not look at her all.
she looked straighforward and didn’t even make eye contact with her.
both dian and rachel are serviing their sentences in in separate prisons in missouri.
the youngest daughter 11 year old briana was unharmed and after her mother and sister’s arrest she was placed safely in foster care.
allthough she survived sarah staudte suffered brain damage as a result of the antifreeze poisoning she has a guardian and resides in an assisted living facility.
as for her decision to forgive her mom and sister she says ” as a christian it was the right thing to do”