Murder-Suicide After a Viral TikTok - ATC International

**Meshel Laurie** (0:04)
This is Australian True Crime International with Meshel Laurie. Just days before she was killed, Sara Gilson posted a TikTok saying she was preparing for the day Netflix made a documentary about her soon-to-be ex-husband after she discovered he was a pedophile.
12 days later, police allege her estranged husband, Jeremiah Shawn Duffey, shot and killed Sara before taking his own life. Today, we're joined by investigative journalist and That's So Criminal host, Lynden Blake, to unpack the case. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. A warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

**Lynden Blake** (0:51)
She was a girl that was a mom, she was a wife and she loved just using social media. I feel like she was just one of those girls, a country girl, a small town girl out living in Oklahoma, and she would use TikTok as a way to make income, and she would sell jewelry and bags, and she'd be like, look at this bag, Emma, I love the color of this bag. It really goes with everything. I mean, she just seemed very relatable, and when you're watching her videos, it really seemed like you knew who she was.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:23)
Okay, if you're in your 20s or 30s and feel like you're in the trenches, take it from me, you are. I'm 43 years old, and I can honestly say my 40s are my best years yet. I really can't explain why. It's just like your give a damn is completely busted. And I mean shattered in the best way possible. Like I could care less what people think about me.
I could care less what they say about me. I just love me. My confidence is the highest it's ever been. I've never been one to have a lot of confidence in my life, and I love myself.

**Lynden Blake** (1:51)
But she also has this online persona with her husband, Jeremiah Shawn Duffey.
He goes by Shawn, that's how he's been identified within parentheses. Him and Sara were known online as the Duffs. And just to the TikTok world, to the social media world, they seem like they really had it all together. And they were young. And again, she had two kids, but she was still young herself, 43
She had a lot going for her. But when you start digging into the case, which is the lead up to the horrible murder, you start realizing that it wasn't always butterflies with them and a big character in this entire investigation. And telling the world who Sara was is her first husband, Lyle Landers. And he said that he tried to get her, Sara to leave Shawn Duffey five times over the course of their marriage. And this is coming from father of her children, her first husband, they had a great relationship. But that breaks my heart for him because he even said, back in 2021, she was going to leave him. And she didn't show up for the case hearing. And the case was dismissed, she missed the hearing. And it's sad because this ended super tragically. But you think about it, there's so many relationships out there where one of the parties knows what they should do, but they just keep giving chance after chance to the person.

**Meshel Laurie** (3:37)
And that not showing up to the hearing is really classic too, isn't it? Because it's a dynamic situation. The relationships on and off, it's in and out.
It's very emotional and oftentimes that sort of thing does happen.

**Lynden Blake** (3:50)
And it's a tale as old as time. And I think because of Sara Gilson participating in this Netflix documentary trend on TikTok and kind of for the first time, really peeling back the layer of, okay, this is my soon to be ex-husband. I'm preparing for my Netflix documentary on my soon to be ex-husband who I found out was a pedophile. And you're like, whoa.

**Meshel Laurie** (4:17)
Yeah.

**Lynden Blake** (4:18)
But this is not funny. This is not talking about your dog or you're like, oh my gosh, like this poor girl. But then you're like, you get invested. Cause you're like, oh, okay, soon to be ex-husband. Like she is leaving her man. Like she found out this guy was a pedophile, I'll say allegedly, even though that's kind of redundant now.

**Meshel Laurie** (4:42)
Yeah.

**Lynden Blake** (4:42)
But you start getting invested and that's what happened in this case. Because this TikTok, there was some time between when this all happened and when the horrible tragic situation happened. So she made that TikTok, July 11th is when she made it absolutely viral TikTok.