The alleged attack came as a couple split up and as the defendant worried about her children and her health, investigators say.
CASPER, Wyo. — A criminal case unfolding in Casper centers on a stabbing inside a family living room, but court records and published accounts show investigators also focused on the marriage behind it, describing a household strained by divorce, custody fears and competing abuse claims before a knife was ever drawn.
Tabatha Richardson, 37, is charged with aggravated assault and battery after authorities say she stabbed her husband in the neck on Dec. 9, 2025, while he was feeding their infant son. What gives the case added weight is the way detectives say those family pressures may connect to the evidence: worries over losing custody, concern about a medical condition, suspicion about another relationship and later claims of abuse that investigators say were not backed by the records they reviewed.
Investigators said the husband told them he came to the house to see the children while the couple was going through a divorce. That detail appears early in the affidavit and frames the visit not as an ordinary evening at home but as a stop in a family already splitting into separate legal and personal lives. Deputies later said they found communications on Richardson’s phone showing concern that her medical condition might affect custody. They also said she believed her husband had started another relationship before seeking the divorce. A warrant for medical records, according to the affidavit, found that in November she had reported no physical abuse by her husband while expressing worry about the divorce and about losing the children. In January, investigators said, she alleged that he had abused her for 18 years. Those threads gave detectives a timeline that they appear to regard as important to understanding motive.
The stabbing account itself was brief, fast and violent. The husband told investigators he made a bottle, sat on the couch and fed the infant, then held the child to help him sleep. He said Richardson made a remark and he suddenly felt something on the right side of his neck. When he touched his neck and saw blood, he said, he set the baby down and tried to escape after she stabbed at him again and missed. Richardson offered a different account, saying she was holding the baby when he attacked her and that she pulled a folding knife from her bra and stabbed him to stop him. Both then called 911. A child in the home reportedly did not witness the act itself but heard the husband cry out, “What are you doing?” and heard Richardson answer that he was hurting her. The line between family argument and felony case was crossed within seconds.
Deputies say the strongest support for the charge came not from those first statements but from what followed. They searched the home and reported finding blood, baby clothes, a blood-stained blanket and a black folding knife with a stain on the blade. They also said there were no signs of a struggle. A camera from the home, which investigators said had been moved from outside to a bedroom, allegedly showed Richardson roughly 2 1/2 hours before the stabbing striking herself with a small sledgehammer. Deputies later said bruises on her body matched the shape of the tool. Brooks also wrote that she later admitted hitting herself and scratching herself with a chisel. The case, as investigators describe it, moved from a one-on-one credibility contest toward a record-driven review of what the room, the tools and the video could establish independently.
The reports also show detectives testing Richardson’s version against practical detail. She said she used one hand to open the knife while holding the child. Investigators, however, described the knife as a common lock-blade model without spring assist and said she demonstrated opening it with two hands. Deputies also said her phone contained messages she sent to herself about abused women and materials on how to testify about abuse. Brooks wrote that a physician had not recommended hitting herself with a sledgehammer for treatment and instead recommended a massage gun or massage by hand. A search of the husband’s phone, investigators said, found nothing indicating he had been abusive. None of that resolves the broader personal history of the marriage, which remains contested, but it does explain why authorities framed the case as an attempted false trail rather than as mutual combat.
That framing carries the case into its next phase. Richardson has been released after posting 10% of a $30,000 cash or surety bond. Published reports said an arraignment date had not yet been listed. The charge carries a possible penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine if she is convicted. For now, the public record shows a prosecution built on a domestic incident that quickly expanded into questions about preparation, credibility and what role the couple’s divorce and custody conflict may have played in the events inside the house.
The immediate scene remains one of the most unsettling parts of the case. A father was holding an infant. Another child was nearby in the home. Deputies say the husband fled bleeding from the neck and called for help from his pickup outside. Richardson went to the hospital and repeated that she was defending herself. The legal process ahead will determine which account survives, but the known facts already sketch a family crisis that had been building long before Dec. 9 and was still shaping the evidence after the sirens were gone.
Author note: Last updated April 19, 2026.