Some stories of true crime frighten me and I become obsessed with looking into the reasons why people do the things they do. For example how a relationship can go from love and trust to over the years fear and murder. Like me and my husband the Seacat’s bought a beautiful home and had two boys ages 2 and 4, their life seemed normal, married for 7 years and together for 19. Brett loved his house and had plans to work on it and improve it for his family, so how did his wife end up with two bullets in her and their house almost burned to the ground?
What happens when your pretty young wife and mother of your two sons decides she doesn’t want to be married to you anymore, she doesn’t want to stay together for the kids, she wants you out of her life. What if she decides it is not worth the hours in therapy to help save a marriage that has become a battle?
At 34 years old Vashti Seacat made the legal choice to leave her husband and try to find happiness on her own. Brett learned that she was getting close to a co-worker and was intimate with him and Vashti just didn’t want to be married to Brett anymore. After Vashti filed for divorce the couple continued to live together under the same roof, Vashti expressed fear for her life to numerous people in her life, including that she was afraid after the divorce was final that Brett would burn the house down with their kids inside. Their marriage couselor said Vashti was the happiest she had ever been because she was looking forward to the divorce and moving forward. Vashti had already planned a vacation to Mexico with her sister and various décor projects for her home.
On one particular night after their seperation, Brett wakes up Vashti to tell her about this terrible dream he had about killing her, was this a warning to her? Vashti was afraid as Brett was losing control and making threats if she went through with the divorce, that he would take her kids away and expose an affair that would cause her to also lose her job.
Let’s stop here and think for a moment, you are a 39 year old man, you have two sons you love and a pretty wife, you have an amazing home and you think quite a bit of yourself. Suddenly, your wife is leaving you and maybe even for another man, she is taking your house and sons, who would now maybe be raised by a future step father and you will have them on the weekends. How are you feeling about this? Are you in a state of panic, how do you stop this? Maybe you should have treated your wife better? Maybe you should have done this and that? She doesn’t want to try to fix things, she has made up her mind, you are not in her plans anymore, perhaps you deserve this. She will be going to Mexico as a free woman.
For a normal man this is hard and he may not survive such a life event, he may change, become sheltered, he may never trust again, he may continue to try and work it out, even in vain. To a phsycopath or a desperate man this will end badly.
Brett claims that one night in April of 2011 at 3AM or so he was asleep on the sofa of his home and Vashti was upstairs in her bedroom when he received a call on his cellphone from her, he says in the days leading up to this incident Vashti was depressed a contradiction to what her therapist and sister have said, he claims she told him, “Come get the boys if you don’t want them to get hurt,” or something in those words. He says, he heard some noise and two shots and ran up the stairs to find his wife dead on their bed and the room on fire, he says he tried to revive her but then went to find his boys. He leads his boys outside to safety and runs back in to help his wife, but is pushed back by the flames.
She is dead, he says she killed herself and set fire to the house and even left a suicide note in her journal. How tragic. Now Brett, although sad, can rebuild his life and his house with his boys. Vashti is gone but he will have to be strong.
Brett Seacat is a Sherriff’s Deputy and knows the ins and outs of a crime scene. Problems with Brett’s story?
Oh those effing neighbors! A neighbor says the shots were heard at 3:15AM and this neighbor is sure of it. Brett makes his dead fish trying to act upset call to 911 at 3:59AM. For 39 minutes between the shots and the call, Brett was doing what exactly?
Although Brett claims he tried to revive his bleeding wife, there is no soot, blood or anything on his close, nothing except for gasoline residue, oops.
Vashti was found under her covers and shot in the head and then in the neck, too bad for Brett that he shot her in a downward position, a position that someone who was lying in bed would not be able to accomplish only a persons standing over a sleeping person can get that angle right, oops.
Medical examiner says there was no soot in Vashti’s lungs, but more importantly none in her airways this means she was not breathing while the fire was on and blazing, her mouth was closed and she was already dead.
Her suicide journal was clear in her last wishes. However, her hand writing was stiff and shaky at the same time. Brett in the days before her death borrowed an overhead projector he often used at work to pratice forgeries, too he borrowed it so openly.
What to do to make yourself look even more guilty? How about destroy all the computer harddrives in your home and a few cellphones.
"I'm smart enough that if I wanted to kill my wife ... I could've come up with something better than this," Seacat told investigators about the shooting and the fire. "This is what a crazy person does."
What can drive a man to go crazy? I asked my husband of eight years what he thought, he told me he could not live without our boys and to even think that I would leave him and take our house and everything important to him and also maybe have a new man in my life, that this would make him crazy and that he would seriously question his mental stability. I told my husband that women and men have a legal right to divorce, that if I awoke tomorrow and wanted out that I should be able to go without fearing for my life.
Vashti for all accounts was not taking him children or his house that I know of, and even if she was she did not deserve what happened, nor did her family or her boys.
The case has been handed to the jury after he testified that his wife suffered from depression and did this to herself.
Will the jury believe him? Is divorce dangerous?
If my husband left me tomorrow would he have the same rights as a dad to gain the children and keep the house?
