When she was a minor, Ashlee Wlasiuk testified in her father’s defense.
But in November, days before Peter Wlasiuk is scheduled to be considered for parole after serving decades for the murder of his wife Patricia Wlasiuk, Ashlee Wlasiuk is releasing a book recounting the case and the impacts it had on her life titled “Did You Kill My Mother?”
The book cover describes it as a “true-crime memoir.”
Patricia Wlasiuk was Ashlee Wlasiuk’s stepmother. Ashlee Wlasiuk’s biological mother, Jacki — Ashlee Wlasiuk didn’t state her last name — did not marry Peter Wlasiuk. She died in a house fire prior to a custody hearing, Ashlee Wlasiuk said.
Patricia Wlasiuk was found dead in Guilford Lake on April 3, 2002, in what initially appeared to investigators as a pickup truck accident. Police later concluded that Peter Wlasiuk had staged it.
Peter Wlasiuk has maintained his innocence across three trials — all of which ended in murder convictions, though he appealed the first two leading to retrials.
“It’s hard waiting for someone,” Ashlee Wlasiuk, then age 15, said in 2008, according to Daily Star archives. “He’s been in jail and prison almost six years for something he didn’t do, but sometimes it seems we’re the only ones who believe he’s innocent,” she said of Wlasiuk family members.
Nearly 20 years later and married with a child of her own, Ashlee Wlasiuk said Monday, Sept. 28 that getting in touch with her biological mother’s side of the family, observing behavioral patterns of her still-imprisoned father and asking him direct questions about what happened all contributed to the change of her perspective.
Ashlee Wlasiuk, who was primarily raised by her paternal grandparents, said there were not perspectives in her immediate life that viewed Peter Wlasiuk as potentially guilty. She said she only learned that her father was in jail or accused of murder when another child on the school playground said so.
She said Peter Wlasiuk’s “story has changed so many times” that he’s never told the same version of his story. Throughout the years, Ashlee Wlasiuk said, Peter Wlasiuk has offered explanations for Patricia Wlasiuk’s death, including swerving the truck to avoid a deer, a K-turn gone wrong and, most recently, suicide.
Ashlee Wlasiuk said, however, that Peter Wlasiuk and his defense attorney, Randel Scharf of Cooperstown, took deep interest in the consistency of her testimony at trial.
Peter Wlasiuk and Scharf “coached me just minutes prior to me testifying” downstairs in the Chenango County Courthouse when she was 14, Ashlee Wlasiuk said.
They “told me to get up there and say that I had seen my uncle abusing his girlfriend in the backyard” rather than Peter Wlasiuk hitting Patricia Wlasiuk.
Ashlee Wlasiuk said the coaching came in response to testimony from Clarence Edick.
Edick testified that while hunting in November 2001, he observed Peter Wlasiuk hitting Patricia Wlasiuk two or three times in their backyard and threatening to kill her, according to contemporaneous reporting by The Evening Sun on the 2008 trial.
“Repeat after me,” Ashlee Wlasiuk said she was told by Peter Wlasiuk and Scharf.
The Daily Star reached out to Scharf for comment Wednesday, Sept. 30.
Ashlee Wlasiuk said one of the main impetuses for the book was how her father reacted to the birth of her child. It was the last time she spoke with her father, about five days after the birth, in October 2025.
Peter Wlasiuk’s focus was not on celebrating the news, she said, but he was angry that she had given the child the same name as her biological mother’s brother, however unwittingly. There also was an argument about ownership of a family property, she said.
“He just kept going and going and going about how I’m selfish,” she said.
Ashlee Wlasiuk said she does not think her father is aware that the book is coming out. She said she hopes, but does not expect, that he will not be granted parole.
To learn more about the book, visit didyoukillmymother.com.