Hayesville man convicted after shooting his
wife eight times at her workplace in 2021
By Shawn Jarrard
Towns County Herald
Editor
Shooting survivor Crystal Matheson breathed an emotional sigh of relief in the courtroom of the Towns County Courthouse Monday when a jury returned guilty verdicts against her estranged husband, Jason Matheson, who was on trial for attempting to murder her in January 2021.
Jurors spent a little over an hour deliberating on Monday, Sept.12, returning around 2 p.m. on the fifth day of the trial with guilty verdicts for the charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault and aggravated stalking.
Superior Court Senior Judge Albert B. Collier sentenced Jason Matheson, 43, to the maximum penalty of 30 years in prison, commenting how he couldn’t believe, “We’re not sitting here trying a murder case” after Crystal miraculously survived being shot eight times.
In a pre-sentencing statement, Crystal, thanked everyone who helped her to realize justice in the case, including the doctors and nurses who saved her life and those involved in the prosecution, adding that she hoped she could forgive Jason some day for the crimes he had committed.
As described in the trial, a potential motive for Jason Matheson’s actions was a proposed downward spiral he experienced after separating from his wife in July 2020, the summer before the shooting.
At the time, Matheson had developed extreme jealousy allegedly based on instances of infidelity from a past marriage. His distrust culminated in an alleged assault that resulted in criminal charges and a separation from Crystal, who for the next six months repeatedly demonstrated her desire to make the separation permanent up to and including the day before the shooting.
The trial started Tuesday, Sept. 6, with jury selection. Opening arguments took place Wednesday and the trial progressed quickly, wrapping up with closing arguments the following Monday followed by jury deliberations and sentencing.
Witness testimony began Sept. 7 with Crystal Matheson, who survived being shot eight times at her job on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021.
Crystal, who lives in Hayesville, described a nightmarish scenario that began when a man in a hoodie walked into her Hiawassee workplace at Chatuge Regional Hospital Rehabilitation & Wellness Center around 2 p.m.
As the front office manager, Crystal was not expecting any patients, since the 2 p.m. appointment had already arrived and was in the process of receiving physical therapy.
The dire nature of the situation became clear, however, when the man in the lobby turned toward the receptionist window and threw back his hood. Crystal said there was no doubt in her mind that the man she saw standing mere feet away was her estranged husband, Jason Matheson, who was legally barred from being near her due to a Domestic Violence Protective Order.
She saw him lift a handgun in the same moments the hood came back and then she heard a gunshot as the glass window shattered and a bullet hit her in the stomach, according to her testimony.
After getting shot a second time, Crystal said she pushed back from her desk to flee and that Jason advanced to continue shooting, striking her in what turned out to be eight times over her stomach, back, arms and legs. She collapsed on the floor a short distance from her desk.
Coworkers began to administer life-saving aid after the shooter left the building. No one else saw the man directly, though one of Crystal’s coworkers who was in the office room with her did see the gun protruding a short distance into the shattered window during the shooting.
A patient in the building went to lock the front door and witnessed a man with Jason’s hair color entering, and pulling away in a truck that generally matched the description of the defendant’s vehicle. Another witness described a similar truck driving erratically in the parking lot earlier in the day.
While awaiting an ambulance for subsequent life flight, Crystal told her coworkers and local law enforcement the shooter was her husband, against whom she had an active protective order that had been extended multiple times, including the day before the shooting.
Crystal had received the protective order following an incident from July 11, 2020, that ended in Jason allegedly strangling her after a weekend spent arguing over his suspicions that she was being unfaithful in the marriage.
The couple were married in December 2017, and his suspicions, which she said were unfounded, had been building with increasing intensity for at least six months prior to the strangulation that was forceful enough for her to seek medical treatment for coughing up blood.
Jason was charged with aggravated assault in that July 2020 incident. Trial testimony last week alluded to an alleged request by his attorney asking Crystal’s attorney at a Jan. 25, 2021, civil hearing to seek to drop the felony charge against him, which Crystal declined to do.
The request was reported to have happened the day before the shooting and prosecutors argued this was the final straw in Jason’s downward spiral that led him to commit his crimes.
All told, the “overwhelming evidence” presented by Enotah Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorneys Buster Landreau and Kelly Holloway came in the form of 100 pieces of evidence and testimony by 28 witnesses, including special agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
For the defense’s part, no witnesses were called.
As outlined by the state, witness testimony from an extensive investigation painted a portrait of a man who went out of his way to procure the means to kill Crystal, having traded his guitar for a loaded 9 mm handgun just two weeks before the premeditated crime.
While no handgun was recovered, the state presented evidence that indicated Jason had not only owned a handgun and the kinds of ammunition used in the shooting — unspent cartridges were found in his vehicle and room and a handgun cleaning brush was recovered from his residence — but that he had discharged a firearm near the time of the shooting.
The prosecution argued that Jason lied during the initial investigation when stating he had never owned a pistol and had not fired a gun in over a year. A test for gunpowder residue on his hands following his arrest came back positive.
Additionally, a ballistics expert testified that the bullet casings from the scene were consistent with having been fired from either of two types of 9 mm handguns, one of which matched the firearm Jason reportedly received in a property trade with a coworker using his guitar.
The prosecution also pointed out that Matheson lied to investigators about why he hadn’t gone to work the day of the shooting, noting that his alibi — that he’d spent the day drinking beer and was at his dad’s house at the time of the shooting — could not be corroborated by his father on the witness stand.
Still more testimony highlighted troubling statements attributed to Jason Matheson, such as him telling Crystal the pair “would just kill each other” if their marriage did not work out and commenting while watching a movie with her that the stomach is where a gunman should aim so their target bleeds out; Crystal was shot three times in the stomach.
Matheson previously pleaded not guilty to the charges against him related to the Jan. 26, 2021, shooting.
During the trial, Public Defender John Cloy said that, though “a lot of the stuff the prosecution told you is flat out true,” he was concerned over “how the government operates,” with an eye toward making sure “the Constitution is followed.”
Cloy said he was not alleging the government had done anything wrong in its investigation, but he intimated that the state was biased against his defendant and that initial information identifying Matheson as the shooter may be “incorrect,” which would prevent the state from making a solid case.
In essence, Cloy attempted to introduce reasonable doubt regarding the reliability of key witness testimony, the identity of the shooter and subsequent “circumstantial evidence” used against him and the ignoring of potentially exculpatory evidence because, in his mind, GBI agents had immediately singled out the only suspect they would be investigating after being told who the shooter was and therefore made the evidence fit the suspect.
The public defender also noted multiple instances of what he believed amounted to procedural failures — not fingerprinting unspent cartridges, for example — in an investigation he said was biased from the outset against Jason Matheson because he was the estranged husband.
Ultimately, he asked jurors to “hold onto the presumption of innocence” as they deliberated on whether they had reasonable doubt about the case, though the jury found the state’s case compelling and therefore reached a guilty verdict against Matheson on Monday.
The physical, psychological and emotional impacts on Crystal Matheson from that day may be impossible to quantify. She spent about a month in the hospital, then close to seven months in physical therapy and she still has bullet fragments in her body doctors that decided not to remove.
Further, while she has gotten better physically, she still suffers from a limp and other pain that may never go away and the trauma from the shooting. Crystal testified that she truly believed she was going to die.
Her divorce from Jason Matheson, pending a yearlong separation required in North Carolina, should be finalized this week.