He missed his mother and worried about her whereabouts.
The 15-year-old son of Alicia Wilemon-Sullivan, the Florida woman who apparently killed herself in the woods near Weeping Water, Nebraska, alerted authorities in Florida when he hadn’t heard from her. He had heard from a brother in Mississippi that their mother had killed herself.
The missing person report filed with the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office in eastern Florida provides new details in an assisted suicide case involving a Nebraska man.
Matthew Stubbendieck, 41, of Weeping Water is being held at the Cass County Jail on a felony charge of assisting suicide in the death of Wilemon-Sullivan, 38. He is scheduled to appear in court today for a preliminary hearing.
Wilemon-Sullivan was pronounced dead on Aug. 5, but the wounds on her forearms and wrists were consistent with self-inflicted cutting, court documents say. Stubbendieck had said she had cut her wrists on Aug. 1 and when he left her that night in the woods, she was whispering. When he checked on her Aug. 2, she was dead.
Stubbendieck, her boyfriend, told authorities that he believed she was dying of terminal cancer and helped her find a place where she could die as she told him she wished — in his arms.
He said he watched her cut her wrists over a period of seven hours. He said he’d twice tried to suffocate her but could not go through with it. An autopsy, noting the decomposed state of Wilemon-Sullivan’s body, could not conclusively say what role, if any, attempted suffocation might have played in her death. Nor could it conclusively say whether she had cancer.
In an email Monday evening, Don Wilemon, Alicia’s father, said that her family is asking Cass County authorities to pursue prosecution “to the fullest extent allowable under Nebraska law.”
He said the family does not dispute the original intent of Alicia’s actions. He referenced a final autopsy report that said the cause of her death was “undetermined” and cited a variety of factors that may have played a role, including the drugs in her system and possibly hypothermia.
That conclusion — combined with Stubbendieck’s statements — made family members have “grave concerns as to what really happened in the woods.”
Wilemon said the family appreciates the investigation and hopes to see Stubbendieck receive “his just punishment.”
According to the missing person report, 15-year-old Andrew Sullivan told a Volusia County sheriff’s deputy on Aug. 5 that several days earlier, on July 31, his mother told him she was “leaving for a few days.”
He said she told him a man named Kenneth Johnson would be watching him and two younger siblings until she returned.
He said he had not heard from his mother since July 31 and that an older brother, Seth, who lives in Mississippi had called to tell him that their mother had killed herself.
Authorities interviewed Johnson, who told them that he’d gotten a text message on July 31 from Wilemon-Sullivan saying she was going out of town with friends and needed him to watch her children until Aug. 3. He told authorities that he met Wilemon-Sullivan, who gave him $200 for the kids along with her truck keys and permission to use her truck.
Johnson said he last saw Wilemon-Sullivan at Orlando International Airport, and she was heading for her American Airlines flight. He said he last spoke with her on July 31 about 5:40 p.m., but that his subsequent calls went to voicemail.
The next day, Wilemon-Sullivan took her life in Nebraska, according to Stubbendieck. In the next few days he talked with Wilemon-Sullivan’s son and mother about her death.
Shirley Wilemon, Wilemon-Sullivan’s mother, told the Volusia County authorities that when she spoke with Stubbendieck, he was upset and crying.
“She said Matthew told her he was very sorry but Alicia was dead,” the missing person report reads. “She said Matthew told her Alicia took a bunch of pills and, before he knew it, she slit her wrists and died in his arms in a wooded area somewhere in Nebraska.”
She told authorities that Stubbendieck said her daughter made him promise not to tell anyone for several months.
A search by deputies of Wilemon-Sullivan’s home in Florida did not indicate a struggle or anything amiss.
The Florida deputies then began looking for Stubbendieck. They found that the address on Stubbendieck’s Florida driver’s license — he had lived in the Panhandle town of Chipley — no longer existed. (He’d lived in a trailer, and it had been removed.)
Then came a call from a Cass County, Nebraska, sheriff’s sergeant. The Nebraska authorities knew where Wilemon-Sullivan’s body was.
According to Lt. Larry Burke, a Cass County sheriff’s investigator, Stubbendieck had called to report his girlfriend’s death about the same time the department had sent a deputy out on the missing person report. Eventually, Stubbendieck told two deputies and a sergeant that his girlfriend killed herself and that he played a role.
He led them to a wooded area on private property near an old quarry. Because of rain and muddy conditions, Burke said, the officers had to use all-terrain vehicles to reach Wilemon-Sullivan’s body in an out-of-the-way rural area.
The subsequent Cass County investigation found that Wilemon-Sullivan had chemicals in her system, including a powerful narcotic painkiller, morphine. Burke said the morphine and other drugs in her system may have blunted the pain from the cuttings.
Though Stubbendieck insisted that his girlfriend had stage 4 cancer, Burke said Monday “there is nothing to prove she was terminally ill with cancer.”
The autopsy did not find tumors or lumps. He said there was nothing to disprove she had it, either.
An attorney for Stubbendieck couldn’t be reached on Monday. His father, Howard Stubbendieck, said Sunday that his son, who most recently worked as a tree-trimmer, would probably retain a public defender. A Cass County office that handles public defense referred all calls to Cass County Attorney Nathan Cox, who did not return a message left for him.
Burke, the Cass County lieutenant, said the investigation indicated that the suicide was planned out.
“I don’t know why he didn’t seek help,” he said of Stubbendieck. “Why didn’t he get her help?”
