A husband said he was attacked without warning. His wife said she was fighting him off. Investigators say the house told a different story.
CASPER, Wyo. — When deputies reached a Casper home after a Dec. 9 stabbing, they were met with two claims that could not both be true: a husband saying he had been knifed while feeding his infant son, and a wife saying she stabbed only because she was being attacked while holding the child.
Authorities have since charged Tabatha Richardson, 37, with aggravated assault and battery, saying the evidence they gathered pointed away from self-defense. The significance of the case lies not only in the injury itself, but in how investigators say household video, object placement, bruising patterns and private records reshaped what began as a he-said, she-said domestic violence call into a prosecution over alleged staging and false explanation.
The husband’s version was stark and simple. He told investigators he came to the home to visit the children during an ongoing divorce, made a bottle and sat on the couch with the baby. After the child finished eating, he said, he held him so he would drift to sleep. Then, according to the affidavit, Richardson spoke and he felt something strike the right side of his neck. He put his hand to the wound, saw blood and quickly placed the baby down. He said she stabbed at him again and missed, and he ran outside, got into his pickup and called 911. Richardson’s version cast the same room in a completely different light. She said she was holding the baby when her husband attacked her, punching her ribs and scratching her. She said she pulled a knife from her bra and stabbed him to get him off her.
Investigators did not stop with those accounts. They examined the house for signs that might support one version over the other. Deputies reported blood in the home, baby items in the area and a blood-stained blanket, but they said they did not see evidence of a struggle. They found a black folding knife with a stain on the blade. That mattered because Richardson said she had opened the knife with one hand while holding the infant. Detectives said the knife was a common lock-blade model without spring assist, and they reported that when Richardson was asked to demonstrate how she opened it, she used two hands. In a case built around seconds of violence, that mechanical detail became one of the clearest points investigators cited in challenging her story.
The next break in the case, deputies said, came from a camera. Investigators reported that a security camera had been removed from outside the home and placed in a bedroom. Video from that camera allegedly showed Richardson about 2 1/2 hours before the stabbing using a small sledgehammer to strike herself on the back, shoulders and left rib area. Brooks wrote that the blows appeared intended to leave marks rather than to cause major injury. Deputies later said bruises on Richardson were round and consistent with the hammer. They also recovered a concrete chisel and said she admitted scratching herself with it. Richardson first said the hammer was part of treatment for a chronic condition, according to the reports. Investigators later said she admitted hitting herself to protect herself and her children.
Outside the room itself, detectives traced what they believed were the pressures around the incident. They said Richardson had sent herself messages about physically abused women and had tagged or saved material about testifying in abuse cases. A search warrant for medical records, according to the affidavit, found that she had told a physician in November there was no physical abuse by her husband, though she was worried about divorce and losing custody of her children. Deputies also said her phone communications reflected concern that a medical condition could cost her custody and suggested she believed her husband had started another relationship before filing for divorce. In January, she later alleged 18 years of abuse, investigators said. A search of the husband’s phone, they added, found no evidence indicating he had abused her.
The children’s presence gives the allegations their hardest edge. One child reportedly did not see the stabbing but heard the husband yell, “What are you doing?” and heard Richardson answer that he was hurting her. The infant was being fed or held by one parent under both versions of events, which means the violence, however it began, unfolded within inches of a baby on a couch in a family home. Hospital interviews followed at Banner Wyoming Medical Center as detectives began separating claim from claim. The reports do not answer every question about the marriage or what each child later understood, and those remain unknown in the public record. But the material already released shows investigators treating the children not as side details, but as part of the immediate risk and part of the reason the husband said he feared for safety when he called for help.
Richardson is free after posting 10% of a $30,000 cash or surety bond, and published reports said no arraignment date had yet been listed. The charge carries a possible sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine if she is convicted. For now, the case stands at the point where conflicting stories have given way to a court fight over what the physical record can prove.
Author note: Last updated April 19, 2026.