Did woman sway boy to kill his dad? Court raises doubts

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — The paramedics who looked at Robert Breininger's lifeless body in his twin bed suspected right away that whatever happened didn't match the story being told by his 10-year-old son.

[...] the shooting in rural northwestern Ohio was ruled an accident and stayed that way for nearly a decade until the boy told a former teacher, and then investigators, that Breininger's wife, who had adopted the boy, persuaded him to kill his father because he was dying and to make it look like an accident.

[...] a court ruling is raising questions once again about what took place, ordering a new trial for Judith Hawkey, who's serving a life sentence in a shooting that has been surrounded by mystery from almost from the moment it happened.

State appeals court judges decided the second trial is warranted because testimony shouldn't have been allowed from three witnesses: a child abuse pediatrician, a clinical psychologist and the teacher in whom the boy confided years after the shooting.

What isn't in dispute is that Corey, now 23, came home from school in autumn 2003 and fired the shot that killed his father after Hawkey had left their house outside Defiance, near the Indiana state line.

Hawkey's defense attorney, Clayton Crates, said that a social worker who visited the house before the shooting saw no signs of abuse and that medical records did not back up those claims.