This couple got married and moved to NC after Capitol riot. Next stop could be prison.
The run of recent keepsake moments for Tara Stottlemyer and D.J. Shalvey ended this week with a thud — the thud of a courtroom gavel.
Over the past 22 months, the former Pennsylvania couple got married, moved to North Carolina and opened a regenerative farm near Conover, 45 miles northwest of Charlotte. There, they raise turkeys, chickens and ducks. They call it Redemption Farms.
On Monday, however, Stottlemyer, 37, and Shalvey, 38, became convicted felons, pleading guilty to their roles in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Now they face prison.
With their pleas, both stand convicted of the felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding. Shalvey also pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer, a second felony that likely will add years to his eventual punishment.
While U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly of Washington will decide their sentences in January, plea agreements filed by the government on Monday offer a clue to what might be in store.
Stottlemyer, according to government calculations of the federal sentencing guidelines, faces 15 to 21 months. For Shalvey and his two felony pleas, it’s 41 to 51 months. Prosecutors will make a formal but not binding sentencing recommendation by the end of the year. Kelly can accept or ignore it, or go above or below the sentencing range.
Neither Stottlemyer or Shalvey has been in serious trouble with the law before, records show. But on the morning of Jan. 6, they left tiny Bentleyville, Pa., south of Pittsburgh, and drove to Washington to take part in a protest rally that echoed former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud in his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
The couple then joined a mob of thousands of Trump supporters that stormed the Capitol to stop congressional certification of his defeat. At least five deaths have been tied to the violence. Some 140 police officers guarding the building were injured. Almost 900 people have been arrested, including at least 23 North Carolinians.
According to photos included in his case file, the bearded Shalvey was not dressed simply for a protest march. He wore a helmet, tactical gear and Army-green clothing. Outside the Capitol, he threw an unidentified object that struck a police officer, court documents show.
At 2:20 p.m., he and Stottlemyer and a small-town New York friend who suggested they all drive to D.C. to show solidarity with Trump entered the building and eventually made their way to the Senate chamber. There, Shalvey and others rummaged through documents on the senators’ desks. For a time he also carried handcuffs and zip ties, documents allege.
In one video obtained by the FBI, Shalvey reads from a sheet of paper that outlines Sen. Ted Cruz’s plan to challenge the election results from Arizona during certification. He appears confused at what the Texas Republican’s plan actually means.
“He was going to sell us out all along,” Shalvey says of Cruz, according to an FBI affidavit that accompanied Shalvey’s arrest.
“No, that’s a good thing,” another intruder explains.
Later, according to prosecutors, Shalvey came across a letter written by Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, to Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump had been pressuring to reject some state vote totals in hopes of staying in office. When Pence refused, Trump pilloried him on Twitter, leading some rioters to chant “Hang Mike Pence” as they marauded through the building.
Shalvey, according to prosecutors, took the Romney letter with him then destroyed it.
Court files do not show any photographs of Stottlemyer inside or outside the Capitol. But prosecutors say she was with Shalvey throughout.
Shalvey was arrested in March 2021; Stottlemyer, six months later. Their New York friend, identified in court documents as Katharine Hallock Morrison, was arrested in February 2022. She also pleaded guilty Monday to obstruction of an official proceeding and will be sentenced the same day as Shalvey and Stottlemyer.
Stottlemyer did not immediately respond to an email from The Charlotte Observer on Tuesday seeking comment. Shalvey could not be reached for comment. One of the couple’s attorneys, Assistant Federal Public Defender Myra Cause of Charlotte, also did not respond to a Tuesday email.
Cause’s clients are the second North Carolina couple to find themselves in legal jeopardy linked to Jan. 6, joining Chris and Virginia “Jenny” Spencer of Pilot Mountain.
Jenny Spencer pleaded guilty in January to a misdemeanor charge, was sentenced to 90 days in jail, and has since been released. Her Washington judge also scolded her for bringing the couple’s 14-year-old son inside the Capitol while the violence raged.
Chris Spencer, the first North Carolinian arrested on Capitol-related charges, faces an Oct. 28 hearing in which he either will plead guilty or announce he is going to trial. Spencer was indicted on one felony and multiple misdemeanor charges.
Shalvey and Stottlemyer are scheduled to be sentenced in person in Washington on Jan. 20, two weeks after the second anniversary of the Capitol attack. They will enter Kelly’s courtroom on a bit of a losing streak.
In November, Stottlemyer asked the judge to ease the conditions of her pretrial release so she could buy a gun. Her goal, her attorneys wrote, was to protect her free-range poultry from raccoons, coyotes and other predators preying on her Catawba County farm.
After prosecutors argued that an armed Stottlemyer posed a potential threat not just to the animals killing her birds but to the government officers supervising her release as well, the judge refused.
This story was originally published October 5, 2022 at 5:45 AM with the headline "This couple got married and moved to NC after Capitol riot. Next stop could be prison.."
