Two women charged with first-degree murder in the death in 2004 of a Winston-Salem woman plotted via e-mail to kill her, a prosecutor said yesterday in Forsyth Superior Court.
Katherine Hofmann, 45, and Kim Stout, 55, were charged last year in the death of Sharon Snow on Feb. 1, 2004.
Assistant District Attorney David Hall said in court that he intends to pursue the death penalty against the two women.
Snow, 41, was shot twice in the back after she and her girlfriend, Hofmann, returned home from a Super Bowl party. Hofmann and Snow had been together for nine years. In 2002, Snow learned that she had multiple sclerosis, and Hofmann took care of her.
Snow’s killing divided friends of theirs in the gay and lesbian community, as well as in their church, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greensboro.
Snow’s family filed a civil lawsuit in January 2006 against Stout and Hofmann that accused them of having an affair and killing Snow, but it wasn’t until last year that Winston-Salem police filed any criminal charges against the two women. Police haven’t said what led them to make the arrests.
Yesterday, Hall said that Snow’s death stemmed from the affair between Hofmann and Stout.
In e-mails, they discussed killing Snow and having Stout move into the house that Hofmann and Snow shared, Hall said in court.
After Snow’s death, Stout did move in with Hofmann, and together they sought to collect $157,000 on Snow’s life-insurance policy, Hall said.
He said he was asking for the death penalty because the killing was “especially heinous, atrocious and cruel” in that the two women killed Snow knowing that she had multiple sclerosis and was in poor health. They also killed Snow for financial gain in trying to collect on her life-insurance policy, Hall said.
In Stout’s case, there was the additional aggravating factor of burglary because she was in Snow’s house the night of Feb. 1, 2004, without Snow’s permission, Hall said.
Stout and Hofmann both practiced Wicca, a pagan religion that focuses on worshipping the divine in nature, and Hall said that the two women decided when to kill Snow based on the Wiccan calendar.
The two women met in 2003 at Stout’s wedding to another woman, Hall said. There was an immediate attraction, and Hofmann and Stout soon began an affair, he said.
The law­suit filed by Snow’s family alleged that Stout and Hofmann each shot Snow once. An autopsy showed that Snow was shot twice in the back and that the bullets appeared to have been fired through a pillow, with a different pillow for each shot fired.
Hall said that gas-station receipts, bank statements and other documents prove that Stout, who lived in another state at the time of the killing, was in Winston-Salem on the night of Feb. 1, 2004.
The civil lawsuit said that Hofmann waited an hour before calling 911 and that paramedics would testify that Snow had been dead for at least that long.
Hall said Hofmann had gunshot residue on her, and foam filling from a pillow. Hofmann told police that a burglar had shot Snow and had knocked her out.
During the hearing, Hofmann and Stout said little.
David Freedman, Hofmann’s attorney, said in court that yesterday’s hearing was simply to see whether prosecutors had enough aggravating factors to pursue the death penalty. Prosecutors didn’t present any evidence that proves Hofmann and Stout are guilty, he said.
Tom Fagerli, Stout’s attorney, said that it would take at least a year before the case goes to trial because of the thousands of pages of discovery prosecutors have given him in the case.
Hofmann and Stout are each entitled to a second attorney because they are facing the death penalty. No trial date has been set.
Both women are in the Forsyth County Jail, with no bond allowed.
The last woman whom prosecutors sought to put on death row in Forsyth County was Dorna Diane Walker, who was convicted in 2002 of killing her boyfriend. A jury decided to give her life in prison without parole.
mhewlett@wsjournal.com
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