A Minnesota mother who once warned a judge she was terrified of her husband was found stabbed to death in their North St. Paul home early Saturday, with her husband dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot nearby and their 14-month-old granddaughter unharmed in the house.
Lisa Thigpen, 37, and Gregory Thigpen, 41, were discovered just before 1 a.m. On Nov. 1 after police responded to a 911 call about an assault, according to authorities. Lisa had suffered visible stab wounds while Gregory appeared to have died from a gunshot, cops noted. Their official causes of death had not been released as of Friday afternoon, though police characterized the attack as an “isolated incident.”
The violence that ended both their lives followed more than a decade of documented abuse that Lisa had repeatedly brought to court, according to records obtained by The Post. Gregory’s documented abuse of Lisa began after the birth of their first daughter, now 22, when he was sentenced to 90 days in jail on a domestic assault conviction causing bodily harm for an incident involving Lisa in 2006.
Despite that conviction, the couple had three more children together — now ages 17, 15 and 13, according to a GoFundMe created to support the surviving kids — and married in 2015. But the abuse escalated soon after their wedding, Lisa told the court in a September 2018 petition for a restraining order.
“The verbal and emotional abuse has been throughout our relationship and have escalated over the past year – threatening to kill me, kill me and himself, and leave the kids without parents,” she wrote of Gregory.
“He is extremely controlling and keeps me isolated from everyone.”
Lisa described one terrifying episode from earlier that same month, when an argument about money erupted while two of their children were home. Gregory suddenly yelled, “I am going to snap,” before attacking her, she wrote.
“He was holding me down, restraining me, and attempting to strangle me,” Lisa stated in the petition. “He told me that he was going to kill me.”
She said their eldest daughter, then 14, walked in and told him to stop, at which point Gregory released her. Lisa was left with scratches, bruises and red marks across her neck, chest and chin, she documented.
“I am afraid of him and what he might do. I am not sleeping, I am shaky, I am constantly afraid,” she continued in the filing. “I am scared of what Greg will do the next time he snaps.”
A judge granted the restraining order. Yet just two months later, Lisa returned to court asking that it be lifted.
“I would like to go to marriage counseling and save [our] family and marriage,” she reportedly wrote in that filing. “He has been following the order and I feel no threats to me. Gregory is willing to be more involved with [our] children.”
The judge granted that request as well.
An online fundraiser to support the couple’s four surviving children had raised nearly $30,000 as of Friday. The page notes that eldest daughter Paige, 22, now faces “the overwhelming responsibility of helping care for her younger siblings and handling the many things that come with losing a parent so unexpectedly.”
“No one this young should ever have to face these kinds of challenges,” the GoFundMe bio reads.
The 14-month-old granddaughter found in the home during the Nov. 1 incident was unharmed, police confirmed.