01-06-2025
Georgia Woman Shoots Mom in Head, Then Returns To Do It Again: "Very Cruel"
Emergency medical technicians in LaGrange, Georgia, responded to a desperate 911 report regarding 66-year-old Margaret Abernathy on Monday, February 4, 1991. The call was made by her daughter Priscilla Matula.
Dressed in bloody pajamas, Abernathy was breathing but unresponsive as EMTs tried to stabilize her. 'It looked like somebody had come in and shot her while she was in the bed asleep,' said Randy Redden, who was then an investigator with the Troup County Sheriff's Office.
'She had woken up at a certain time later, went to the bathroom... where she was shot a second time,' Redden said in the 'Blood Betrayal' episode of The Real Murders of Atlanta, airing Saturdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen.
Abernathy was rushed to a local hospital, accompanied by her daughter. Back at Abernathy's home, police processed the scene, which they initially thought was a robbery gone wrong based on a broken window pane on a door.
But police soon realized that the glass had shattered outward, not in, said Anne Cobb Allen, a former prosecutor for the Troup County District Attorney's Office.
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Those details indicated that the scene was staged. 'That signaled to the investigators that somebody who knew Miss Abernathy could quite possibly have committed the murder,' Allen said.
Based on the state of blood coagulation in the bedroom and bathroom, the medical examiner estimated that Abernathy was initially shot around 7:30 a.m. and again three hours later.
At the hospital, two .22-caliber bullets were removed from Abernathy's body. She'd been shot execution-style twice in the back of the head. She was later taken off life support and pronounced dead. In that instant, the case became a homicide.
Who would brutally murder a beloved widowed matriarch and prominent LaGrange businesswoman? Evidence eventually led police to a shocking learned that Abernathy and her husband, William, were well-known community leaders who ran a successful car dealership. They had three children — Alect, Priscilla and Melody. Family was Abernathy's top priority. 'Nanny was a really big part of our lives,' said her grandson John Lott.
'Granddaddy and Nanny were always together,' Abernathy's granddaughter Christy Lumpkin said on The Real Murders of Atlanta. 'We did vacations together. We did Sunday dinners together.'
After William's death in 1990, the car dealership was sold. Abernathy's murder left the grieving family reeling.
Detectives asked Matula to recall everything that happened on the day her mom was shot, from the time she woke up to the moment she called 911.
Investigators discovered that Abernathy had helped Matula and her husband Nick finance and launch their own car dealership. 'She [Matula] indicated that Margaret Abernathy was a great mother. They had been very, very close,' Allen said.
Matula told law enforcement that she always got to her car dealership at 8 a.m., adding that she'd gone to the post office that morning and returned to her office at 10:30 a.m.
Matula said that after her mother didn't return her phone calls, she drove to Abernathy's house and arrived at about 12:25 p.m. She said she noticed the broken pane when she got there, and that she found her mom in the bathroom and called for help.
Investigators didn't see that any valuables were missing from the home. 'None of her jewelry was taken, no electronics, no TVs, and nothing else of any value was taken,' Allen said.
Detectives had Matula inspect the crime scene for anything that was missing. 'It looked like all they took, according to Priscilla, was a mink coat and a .22 Derringer pistol,' Redden said. 'The Derringer belonged to Mr. Abernathy before he died.'
Detectives suspected that the missing pistol was used in the homicide. 'It implied that the perpetrator had no weapon on their person, and they either stumbled on Margaret's gun or they knew where to find it,' said former WVEE news anchor Linda Looney.
Matula told police that after her father died, a family friend lived with her mom. 'Initially we were interested in him, since he was in the house and had a key,' said Redden.
With further investigation, police found that an alibi the friend gave was airtight and he was cleared as a suspect. Matula's husband Nick was also ruled out after police interviewed him.
'Detectives suspected that the perpetrator was someone that had a way to get into Margaret's home,' said Looney.
Police considered Alect Abernathy, who was cash-strapped and the beneficiary of his mother's life insurance policy. He was also cleared. That pushed investigators back to square one.
After getting word out about the case through local media, investigators heard from a LaGrange bank employee that changed the course of the case.
The tipster told them that a week before her murder, Abernathy discovered that Matula had written checks worth more than $60,000 that she wasn't cleared to write.
Matula was a signatory on her mom's personal accounts. 'She was basically using Margaret Abernathy's accounts as her personal ATM,' Allen said. 'Miss Abernathy spoke to the bank employees and wanted Priscilla off of all of her accounts.'
Investigators did a financial dive and found that Matula was taking money from her mother's bank account to keep her floundering car dealership afloat. 'Margaret was getting ready to cut Priscilla off, and she was no longer going to have access to that account,' Looney said.
Redden told The Real Murders of Atlanta, 'I believe that's when she [Abernathy] confronted Priscilla. It's possible Priscilla had to do something to stop her mother from taking her off those accounts.'
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After reviewing Matula's account of her whereabouts on the day Abernathy was gunned down, detectives found inconsistencies. In addition, a witness told them that Matula's car was near her mom's house when a gunshot was heard at around 10 a.m. Matula said she was at the dealership at that time.
The working theory of the case was that Matula went to Abernathy's house three times that day. 'We had her in the convenience store by her mother's house that morning, around 7:15 a.m.,' Redden said.
Detectives believe that after leaving the store, Matula laid in wait for the live-in family friend to leave her mother's house for work at around 7:30 a.m. before enacting her plan.
Detectives believed that Matula entered the house and shot her mom as she slept, and that she then went to work and stayed there until around 10 a.m., when she returned to Abernathy's home. When she discovered her mother alive, Matula shot her in the head again and staged the crime scene, investigators theorized.
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Eight days into the case, Matula was arrested for murder, fraud and forgery. 'It all made us kind of sick in our stomach,' said Redden. 'Very cruel... I think it was just premeditated, cold ass premeditated.'
Matula pleaded not guilty and denied any involvement in the murder. In August of 1992, she testified on her own behalf, declaring her innocence.
The jury ultimately found Matula guilty of murder and she received a life sentence for that crime. Additionally, she got five years for each count of forgery to run concurrently with the murder.
In May of 2015, after 23 years behind bars, Matula was released on parole.
To learn more about the case, watch the 'Blood Betrayal' episode of The Real Murders of Atlanta. The show airs new episodes on Saturdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen.
