Dateline: Ghosts Can’t Talk - What drove a son to kill his father? The disturbing truth behind the 2018 tragedy

The Dateline NBC Episode Ghosts Can't Talk originally aired in January 2024 and was rebroadcast in January 2026. It examines the events leading to Ted Shaughnessy’s murder.

On the early morning of March 2, 2018, gunshots in the quiet neighborhood of Tarrytown in Austin were heard and broke the peace of the upscale suburbs. Ted Shaughnessy, a 55-year-old jeweler who was well-liked in his neighborhood, was shot to death in his own kitchen when his wife, Corey, was firing bullets at intruders before she hid in a closet. Bart, the Rottweiler dog of the family, was also dead.

What seemed like a bad robbery would later turn out to be one of the most outrageous betrayals in the recent history of Texas, a murder-for-hire scheme by the couple’s own son, Nicolas Shaughnessy, and his wife, Jaclyn Edison.

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Dateline: Ghosts Can't Talk - What drove a son to kill his father?

Corey Shaughnessy and Ted had created the kind of life everyone would desire to have. Being the proprietors of Gallerie Jewelers in Austin, they had made millions and treated their patrons as great friends. In 2000, they also adopted the Ukrainian orphan, Nicolas, who was only 16 months old, and provided him with all the privileges, a big house, mutual interest cars, and parental support that was unconditional. However, under the cover of such an ideal family, there were money crises and murderous motives.

As it was revealed in the Dateline Episode, Nicolas Shaughnessy, or Nick, as it was revealed in the investigation, had married his high school girlfriend, Jackie Edison, in August 2017. The marriage only came to light to his parents later. In 2018, at the beginning of the year, the young couple had moved to College Station, Texas, where Nick was a day trader, and Jackie was studying engineering at Texas A&M University.

The monetary crisis became the triggering point for murder, as per Dateline. Detectives found out that Nick had run out of money in his day-trading account, and he had unsettled debts of about 30,000,000 with his mother. Text messages from both the phones of Nick and Jackie showed chilling conversations about money. During one transaction a few days before the murder, Nick sent Jackie a text saying that he was “working on it,” and she replied, “Do they want 50K or not?”

Another message was where Jackie wrote, “We can’t afford to pay half before.” Bank accounts verified that Jackie had taken out cash worth a $1000 the day before the attack, and Nick had even sent Jackie a message saying that she needed to have “cash in hand” in case “it” happened.

The husband and wife had disclosed to friends that they were set to receive some $8 million in case Nick’s parents died. His parents had a life insurance policy worth $2 million, which was to pass on to Nick in case of the death of both parents. Having accumulated debt and with family conflicts and pressure, this monetary incentive led the young couple to an unimaginable decision, according to the Dateline Episode.

At approximately 4.27 am on March 2, 2018, Ted and Corey woke up to the sound of their dogs barking. There was an alarm record of a sensor on the window on the ground floor being activated, after which the glass broke. What the Shaughnessys were unaware of was that Nick remotely turned off their home security system a few hours ago at College Station.

As shown in the Dateline Episode, two armed trespassers broke in through Nick’s old bedroom window. Ted went to investigate, and he was met with gunfire. Corey, who is herself a gun owner, picked up her handgun and fired back. The interchange was intense, and there were two varieties of calibers of shell casings at the scene, establishing the presence of more than one shooter. Corey hid in a closet when she ran out of ammunition and called 911 in a frenzy. Ted was lying dead by the kitchen table, and their protective Rottie, Bart, was also killed.

They had planned to kill both parents, but Corey managed to survive. This was against the intended result, which would be important to the investigation. According to an episode by Dateline correspondent Andrea Canning, the investigators immediately wanted to know why a supposed robbery would leave the wife of the rich homeowner alive when she had exhausted all her bullets and was hiding in a closet defenseless. Nothing was stolen out of the house, and this directed law enforcement to a planned strike, and not just any crime.

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Dateline: How investigators connected the dots

The conspiracy was finally revealed through detective investigation and technology. The security video of Nick and Jackie’s apartment, recorded two days before the murder, showed Nick talking to two men at his front door. One was in a T-shirt bearing a unique logo that took investigators to a local window company. Detectives were able to identify Johnny Leon III, 21, through the employees of the company, and he ultimately admitted to being in the Shaughnessy home that night.

According to Dateline, the phone logs of Leon showed that he had made numerous calls to Arieon Smith, and he confessed to firing the fatal shot that killed Ted. Both young men were charged with capital murder. The inquiry showed that Nick and Jackie had known Leon via friends in College Station and offered him a $100,000 to execute the assassination.

In fact, there had been an early effort to break into the house without success. Their later planning, including visits to Austin, where the couple scouted the house and figured out the routine of their parents, resulted in the fatal March morning assault.

There was something suspicious about the way Nick acted after the murder. Although at the time of his father's death, he was over 100 miles away in College Station, phone records established he was lying about not visiting Austin recently. Cell tower records put him in Austin on February 28, two days before the murder.

When he reached his parents’ home after the shooting, he did not even bother to be informed of it, but went straight to the open bedroom window, the kind of thing a person with inside information would do. It was also observed by the detectives that he appeared to be more willing to talk to reporters than to detectives, and his inquiries about whether his father had suffered appeared to them to be excessively rehearsed, as revealed in Dateline.

The worst may have been the self-confession Nick made in subsequent interviews. Speaking from prison to FOX7 Austin, Nick acknowledged the plot's origins:

“It started off very passively jokingly about what if you know, this could be ours, and then it became an unfortunate, like serious conversation.”

He disclosed that he and Jackie had initially intended to do the killings themselves, but that he was too weak-hearted to do so himself, so they employed other people.

Police arrested Nicolas Shaughnessy and Jaclyn Edison on May 29, 2018, for soliciting the murder of Ted Shaughnessy, reports Dateline. Both faced capital murder charges. Nick Shaughnessy, Johnny Leon, and Arieon Smith all took plea deals as they admitted to murder and got 35-year prison sentences with a chance for parole, so they dodged the death penalty.

Jackie Edison pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit capital murder by terror threat. She ended up with just 120 days in jail and 10 years of probation.