Shivangi Sinha
In April 2013, Desiree Sunford was found shot to death inside her home in Yakima County, Washington. Police initially focused their investigation on her husband, Scott Sunford, especially after learning about Paige Blades, a friend of both Desiree and Scott. Scott even claimed that the three of them had been involved in a relationship. However, investigators soon uncovered evidence that painted a different version of their dynamic. NBC’s ‘Dateline: Deadly Entanglement’ explores the details of the case and how Paige eventually became central to the investigation. that challenged his characterization of their harmonious three-way relationship.
Paige Blades Admitted to Being in a Complex Relationship With the Sunfords Before Desiree’s Tragic Death
In 2013, Paige Blades had been living in Wharton, Washington. She was an Army veteran, but by then she was working at a food manufacturing plant. On April 7, 2013, detectives found Desiree Sunford shot to death in her bedroom in Yakima County, Washington, and called her husband, Scott Sunford, in for questioning. When asked about his whereabouts on January 6, 2013, the date investigators believed Desiree had been attacked, Scott claimed that he had been with Paige. He said that after attending his aunt’s funeral, he had stayed with Paige overnight before returning home. Scott also told officers that Paige was involved in a relationship with both him and Desiree, calling it a small experiment they were trying.
Paige was also called in for interrogation, and she gave the same timeline that Scott had provided regarding his whereabouts on the day his wife was killed. She claimed that she and Desiree had allegedly been intimate once and that she had even briefly stayed with the couple, but investigators soon uncovered more details. Police checked Paige’s phone records and found evidence they believed suggested that Desiree had not approved of the closeness between her husband and Paige. Investigators came to suspect that Desiree was likely unaware that the two were having an affair and that underlying tensions prevailed. According to the authorities, in one message, Paige had texted, “I’m fairly convinced that in the event of your demise, I would be the chosen one.”
Police also discovered that Paige was pregnant at the time of the murder and suspected that the child could possibly be Scott’s. Still, there was no evidence directly connecting either of them to the crime, as their phone records supported the timeline they had given investigators. The breakthrough in the case came in July 2015, when an anonymous caller informed police that Desiree’s killer was a man named Marty Grismer. When authorities traced the call, they discovered it had been made by Paige, who was then brought in for questioning again.
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Paige Blades’ Tip Shifted the Murder Investigation Toward Marty Grismer
In her statements to the police, Paige Blades told investigators that Marty Grismer was an old friend and claimed he had allegedly become obsessed with her. She claimed that a week before making the call, Marty had confessed to the killing to her. According to the show, Paige alleged that Marty believed she was pregnant with Scott’s child and that he had killed Desiree Sunford to make her life easier. It is imperative to note that the child she was carrying at the time was not Scott’s. Paige maintained that she had never asked Marty to take such steps and insisted that he had acted entirely on his own accord. She even agreed to wear a wire and attempted to get Marty to confess during a recorded conversation, but the effort ultimately proved unsuccessful.
After Marty’s employers found a gun in their office, which investigators later connected with other evidence in the case, he was arrested and eventually entered an Alford plea, leading to his conviction in the murder of Desiree. In 2018, Paige anonymously appeared on ‘Crime Watch Daily.’ During the interview, she referred to her relationship with Scott as a “polyamorous” one and admitted that she and Scott had continued seeing each other even after Desiree’s death. Since then, Paige has largely kept a low profile and stayed out of the public eye. Therefore, very little is publicly known about her life in recent years.
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