A terminally ill grandmother who shot and killed her son’s ex in a gruesome murder-suicide detailed allegations of abuse in a seven-page memo.
Kathleen Leigh, 65, claimed her ex-daughter-in-law Marissa Galloway, 45, tried to keep her four-year-old daughter away from her son, the girl’s father, in the note found in her pocket, sources said. he told the New York Post.
She also wrote that no one believed her and her son’s claims that Galloway abused the girl, an allegation that New York City child services investigators twice determined to be unfounded.
The letter, scrawled with the words “To Police,” was found on Leigh’s body after she shot Galloway in the head and back as she loaded her 1-year-old son in a car seat into the back of a parked vehicle on the Upper East Side on Friday morning.
Leigh then took his own life by shooting himself in the head, police said.
Kathleen Leigh, 65, pictured in surveillance footage from Friday’s shooting, alleged in a seven-page memo that her ex-daughter-in-law was abusing her 4-year-old granddaughter.
Leigh shot and killed Marissa Galloway (pictured), a mother of two, on a Manhattan street on Friday morning before turning the gun on himself.
The 4-year-old girl, who was not with her mother or grandmother at the time of the shooting, had been the subject of a years-long custody battle between Galloway, a special education teacher, and Leigh’s son.
Throughout the battle, both sides have accused each other of child abuse, according to the Post.
In some of the reports, the girl’s father claimed his daughter came home with bruises on her arm, but investigators found the allegations to be unfounded.
Leigh had even reported the allegations to her neighbors in a Manhattan apartment building where she has been living for the past three years with her son.
Galloway was carrying her 1-year-old daughter in a car seat in the back of a parked vehicle when she was shot.
“She always talked about the fact that she had an ex who was really harassing her because one night child services knocked on my door and asked me if I ever heard any trouble next door,” said neighbor Meryl Feidelman.
“I said, ‘No, no, she’s a lovely mother, a lovely woman.'”
But Galloway also had a history of domestic violence disputes with his partner related to the custody battle, according to New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
Five reports and two complaints were filed with the NYPD between July 2021 and November, but no arrests were made.
Galloway has been fighting for custody of her four-year-old son with Kathleen’s son, the child’s father, since 2021. The one-year-old does not belong to Leigh’s son.
The boy is now in the custody of Leigh’s son as the New York Police Department continues to investigate the murder, which occurred just steps from Mayor Eric Adams’ residence.
She was with her father when her grandmother murdered her mother on the usually quiet, tree-lined street shortly before 9 a.m.
Two guns were recovered at the crime scene: a 9mm handgun from the sidewalk and another handgun in the Target bag Leigh was carrying.
Police are trying to confirm whether or not Leigh possessed the firearms during his time as a parole officer in Chicago, where he worked for 17 years before retiring in 2014.
But officials believe she acted alone in the killing and have no evidence that her son knew of her plans, the Post reported.
Still, Galloway’s family might be entitled to at least some custody of the 4-year-old under special circumstances that would be met “when the mother is murdered in cold blood,” a custody attorney told The Post.
Her other child, a one-year-old girl whose father was apparently a sperm donor, is now with her maternal grandparents in New Jersey.
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