Two Dead Husbands, One Wife: She Claims Self-Defense

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A woman who was cleared of wrongdoing after claiming she killed her ex-husband in self-defense in 1974 told police she mistook her current husband for a burglar and fatally shot him.

Terri Gilbert, 49, was released on $50,000 property bond yesterday. She had been held on a murder charge in the shooting of her husband, Eugene Gilbert, a Bernalillo County commissioner whose body was found in the basement of her house Sunday night.

Mrs. Gilbert had called police to say she had just shot a burglar.

She was arrested early Monday and appeared in court but did not enter a plea.

Her ex-husband, Stephen Hotchkiss, was shot to death in 1974 in a trailer in Corrales. A grand jury ruled that the shooting was justifiable homicide and she was not charged.

"She said he was attacking her and that she was defending herself . . . There (were) bullet holes all over the trailer and casings scattered all over the place," Carlos Pino, a Sandoval County sheriff's deputy at the time, told the Albuquerque Journal.

Investigators learned about the Hotchkiss case from a newspaper clipping that was sent to them anonymously, Albuquerque police Lt. Richard Tarango said.

Investigators also were looking at the possibility she had another husband between Hotchkiss' death and her marriage to Gilbert in 1975.

"It looks like there were three husbands, and we know two are dead," Tarango said. "I'd like to know where the other one is."

Tarango said Mrs. Gilbert is refusing to talk to police.

Gilbert, 49, filed for divorce in March, citing "discord and conflict" as the reason.