Forget it, Jake, It's Washington: Kristine Cushing Hasn’t Murdered Any Children Lately, So Why Shouldn’t She Get to Live as Stepmom with

Another Woman’s Sons?
By Nicholas Stix

 


 

This story gives new meaning to the phrase, “fatal attraction.”

Twenty years ago in California, Kristine Cushing murdered her four and eight-year-old daughters, Stephanie and Amy. Killer Cushing blew her daughters’ brains out with her husband’s pistol, while they slept.
 

Killer Cushing’s first victims, Stephanie (4) and Amy (8).
 

Instead of getting executed, as she should have been, but which virtually no killer-mom ever is, she played the crazy card—‘The Prozac made me do it!’—and won. Oh, she had to do four years in a mental hospital. Soft time. Cost of doing business.
 

Kristine “Killer” Cushing, 20 years ago.
 

Her husband, Marine fighter pilot Lt. Col. John P. Cushing Jr., moved on, married Trisha Conlon, and had two sons with her, Steven (now 14), and Sam (now 13).
 

John P. Cushing Jr. and Trisha Conlon.

 
Except that he didn’t move on. The Marine was still carrying a torch for his murderous sweetheart, and was in touch with her the entire time he was married to Conlon. Someone in that family was crazy, alright, but it wasn’t Kristine Cushing. She’s just crazy like a fox. (And she was a fox.) No, the good colonel is off his rocker with passion for the devil woman. He couldn’t stay away from her.

He and Conlon divorced in 2004, got joint custody of their two sons, and he almost immediately secretly remarried his daughters’ murderer. She must be the world’s greatest lover.

To simplify the references, I’ll refer to the husband as “the Colonel,” or “John,” and to his first and third wife as “Killer.”

The Colonel lied to his second wife about his return engagement with Killer, and even trained their boys to lie about the identity of their new stepmom. He probably didn’t tell them, “Now boys, don’t let your mom know that I’m back with Killer.”

The boys split time between their father and mother, and are sometimes both under the same roof at the same time with Killer. Their mother learned about the secret arrangement when a Child Protective Services worker alerted her.

Trisha Conlon applied to family court to remove the boys completely from Killer’s tender loving care, arguing, “I’m not willing to risk my children’s lives, based on speculation.” She observes of her ex, “I just don't understand how a person could have marital relations with the person who killed their children. It just doesn't make sense to me.”

But this being Washington State, aka “Murderers ‘R Us,” family court Commissioner Leonid Ponomarchuk of course ruled for the Colonel and Killer, noting, to paraphrase, that Killer hadn’t murdered any children lately. The Colonel came up with a lead-pipe cinch of an argument in his appeal to keep the child custody plan that he had initiated through deceiving both the boys’ mother and the court: He swore that he doesn’t let Killer play with his guns anymore.

Trisha Conlon, who sanely left California for Oregon, which is crazy, but not quite as crazy as either California or Washington, is appealing Commissioner Ponomarchuk’s decision, and gets a new hearing on August 25th. Let us hope and pray that she prevails, before Killer strikes again.

The State of Washington, on which I have repeatedly written, must have more crazy white people than anywhere, this side of Hollywood or the psycho ward at Bellevue. Their ranks include eight members of the Washington Supreme Court, Commissioner Leonid Ponomarchuk and, of course, the Colonel, all of whom need to be committed for an indefinite period.

Killer needs to be boiled in oil. And no, I do not mean that figuratively.