Love tangle ends in two deaths

A widow in Apex says her husband couldn't bear breaking up with the woman they both loved

APEX -- Alice Ann Sehulster said she, her husband, the lover they shared and four children had a happy home in Apex.

"He was my husband, and she was my girlfriend," Sehulster said of Jason Daniel Sehulster, 34, and Jessica Leigh Johnson, 20.

"We were all three in love."

The polyamorous relationship ended violently. Several weeks after Johnson moved out, Jason Sehulster drove Sunday morning to the mobile home where she was staying, apparently shot her and then turned the gun on himself.

Both were dead at the scene.

Tony Jones, Johnson's stepfather, on Monday pointed a tattooed hand to the patch of front yard where he said the shooting took place.

"I was standing here and heard her say, 'Oh God, Jason,' and I watched her head explode," Jones said in an interview.

The Wake County Sheriff's Office wouldn't specify the type of firearm used or the nature of the fatal injuries.

Jones said the family wouldn't comment on the nature of the relationship between Johnson and the Sehulsters.

According to Ann Sehulster, the couple met Johnson through mutual friends five years ago and eventually invited her to live with them.

Johnson, then 15, who had left high school, worked with the Sehulsters cleaning the homes of mostly Indian families, as well as the temple at The Hindu Society of North Carolina.

"They were very nice people," temple manager G.D. Sharma said Sunday. "We never expected anything like that."

The Sehulsters and Johnson also had a side business, decorating Hindu weddings, that took them across the country, Ann Sehulster said.

Jason Sehulster worked as a drilling technician with Froehling & Robertson in the Triangle.

He and Johnson had a daughter, Autumn, in 2004. Within weeks, Ann Sehulster also gave birth to a child by Jason. Ann Sehulster had one child from a previous relationship and another child with Jason.

But Robyn Trask, an advocate of polyamorous relationships and editor of the magazine Loving More, said Monday that drawing a 15-year-old into a plural relationship was a mistake. Not only was it illegal, but a partner that young was too immature for such a relationship, Trask said.

Trask also said it's not unusual for polyamorous relationships to lead to jealousy.

"You have to be willing to deal with jealousy," Trask said. "Emotions do run high sometimes."

The Wake Sheriff's Office said the case remains under investigation.

Ann Sehulster said the family was open about the threesome's relationship.

When Johnson left

After Johnson took her 2-year-old daughter, Autumn, and moved back in with her mother and stepfather, Jason Sehulster "couldn't drop her," Ann Sehulster said. "He loved her."

It was the end of the relationship, Sehulster said, that drove Jason Sehulster to Tony and Lynn Jones' trailer Sunday.

He had come, Jones thought, to bring money to support Autumn. He took a truck emblazoned with the F&R logo and parked it on a knoll in front of the trailer.

After the apparent murder and suicide, an inconsolable and angry Jones had trouble controlling himself, Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison said. Deputies handcuffed him, held him in a patrol car and later took him in for questioning.

Another friend of the family was arrested for trying to cross the yellow tape of the crime scene.

Now Jones and his wife are trying to gain custody of Autumn.

"She's the only thing we have left of our little girl," Jones said.

Ann Sehulster said she was reeling from the shock of losing both her husband and girlfriend.

"She was a one-of-a-kind girl," Ann Sehulster said.

"My husband loved us to death."