Surveillance video helps convict transgender woman
MIDDLEFIELD,OHIO -- A woman who used to be a man has admitted to causing the heart attack that killed her elderly husband during an "exercise" session in a swimming pool. Chris Mason, who had a sex change operation in Montreal in 1993, pleaded guilty to reckless homicide in Geauga County and will be sentenced on March 20. She could get up to five years in prison.
Middlefield police on Monday released the surveillance tapes which show Mason, 40, dragging her 73-year-old husband James around an apartment swimming pool. The tapes show James being pushed and dunked under the water. "I think the video speaks volumes for the cruelty that you will see," said Middlefield Police Chief Joseph A. Stehlik. "It's a fairly sinister appearing video."
The video on the day James Mason died, June 2, 2008, lasts one hour and 40 minutes. Stehlik says he counted 43 times in which Chris Mason blocked the elderly man from climbing out of the pool. James Mason had an inordinate fear of water. "Mr. Mason was very afraid of water," Chief Stehlik said, "so afraid of water he'd seldom bathe. He did not exercise and had health problems." James Mason had a heart attack at the end of what Chris Mason called an exercise session. He died the next day and had predicted his own death the police chief said.
"I'm going to die in the pool today," is what James Mason told his mother-in-law Maryanne Vallandingham on June 2, according to police reports. Vallandingham made the admission to police during the course of the investigation. She also said she witnessed Mr. Mason being abused by her daughter Chris. Middlefield Police say Chris Mason subjected her husband to a similar "exercise" session in the pool one week prior to the fatal session. Chief Stehlik says "it almost seemed like a trial run."
In that May 26, 2008 session which lasted only 20 minutes, James Mason is again seen being dragged around the pool and held under the water by his wife. Stehlik says that session was cut short because other people were near the pool. When some youngsters came near the pool Mason reportedly yelled to them from the water, "Please help me, help me! Someone call 9-1-1." No call was made.
Authorities say Maryanne Vallandingham witnessed both sessions in the pool along with other incidents in which James Mason was abused. They say she had actually known Mason since 1963 and that from time to time they shared a home together.
Chris Mason was born John Vallandingham in 1967 and as a boy, was for a time part of the household that included the man who would eventually become his husband. John Vallandingham changed his name to Chris Newton-John after the sex-change in 1993. Later, as a woman, he went back to his birth state, Kentucky, to have his birth certificate to changed to show he was born a girl.
Police Chief Stehlik says Kentucky is the only state which will retroactively change sex on a birth certificate. He believes Newton-John, who took the name Mason after the 2006 marriage to James, had the birth certificate changed as part of plan to try to claim part of James Mason's assets or estate.
The legal birth certificate change allowed Newton-John to marry in Ohio. "This is how calculating this person was," Stehlik said.
Chris Mason admitted during the course of the investigation to having been convicted of stabbing her husband James in the leg when they lived in Cuyahoga County. Police say they were alerted to a number of other reports of abuse, including once when James Mason was thrown against his apartment wall, along with his recliner.
Stehlik says when reports of the noise were investigated, Chris Mason came to the door and said they had been watching an episode of "The Sopranos" and had the volume turned too high. In another incident police report the elderly Mr. Mason was found standing in a corner in his apartment with his nose against the wall. He said his wife ordered him to do so and that he was afraid of punishment.
Middlefield Police say the repeated allegations of abuse led them to strongly investigate James Mason's heart attack death as something other than natural causes. Their suspicions led to an analysis of the surveillance tape and other clues that Mason may have been killed. Chief Stehlik, a police officer for 25 years, says even seasoned policemen found this case "very, very disturbing." He says the circumstances make the case "one of the oddest ones I've seen. I was thinking about that even today," Stehlik said.
"There are some cases that are very unique but this one rises probably to the top." Criminal charges were considered against Maryanne Vallandingham who witnessed much of the abuse, but they were not pursued when she agreed to cooperate in the investigation that led to the conviction of her daughter.
