HAMILTON — About 90 minutes after Miami University professor Sherry Lee Corbett had been pronounced dead at University Hospital, the woman accused of shooting her, Tonda Lynn Ansley, made a chilling admission at the police station here, court records show.

Ansley

        In a five-page statement dictated to Detective John H. Nethers, Ms. Ansley said she wanted to kill more people. She lamented: “The only thing that was not right with what I did was that I didn't set it up so that I could get them all.”

        Ms. Ansley's statement also reveals a possible motive for the brazen July 27 attack witnessed by residents, including children, in the Dayton Lane Historic Area where Ms. Ansley, Ms. Corbett and at least two other intended victims lived. Ms. Corbett, 55, was a historic preservation activist.

        Ms. Ansley says her plan was illegal but “morally right” because, she claimed, Ms. Corbett and the other potential victims had been drugging her, causing her to have “dreams that I've found out aren't really dreams” over the past five years. Ms. Ansley also said she feared they were trying to kill her.

        Ms. Ansley says her plan was justified because “they commit a lot of crimes in The Matrix,” a reference to the 1999 science-fiction film starring Keanu Reeves. “That's where you go to sleep at night and they drug you and take you somewhere else, then bring you back and put you in bed and you think that it's a bad dream.”

        Prosecutors filed Ms. Ansley's statement Friday in Butler County Common Pleas Court as part of their required disclosure of evidence to the defense. After the documents were released Tuesday, Ms. Ansley's court-appointed lawyer, Melynda Cook-Reich, declined to comment.

Corbett

        Ms. Cook-Reich has filed a “not guilty by reason of insanity” plea on Ms. Ansley's behalf; Ms. Ansley has said she neither wants that plea nor an attorney to represent her. Judge Keith Spaeth ordered a mental evaluation of Ms. Ansley and set a competency hearing for next Wednesday. Ms. Ansley, 36, faces 23 years to life in prison if convicted of aggravated murder with a gun specification.

        Ms. Ansley's statement indicates she doubted she would be going to court. “I thought I would get shot and killed,” she said.

        The statement also outlines events preceding Ms. Corbett's slaying. Ms. Ansley said she had bought a gun for protection after she discovered a man hiding in the bed of her truck one night, but she normally didn't carry it with her while she was walking.

        “Today, I took it with me on purpose because I was going to kill those people,” she told police after Ms. Corbett was shot.

        Ms. Ansley listed her other intended targets: her ex-husband, a next-door neighbor, an unnamed psychiatrist, and “some others that I can recognize but don't know their names.”

        She started walking to look for them, and quickly spotted Ms. Corbett on 10th Street, about two blocks away from Ms. Ansley's home at Eighth Street and Campbell Avenue.

        After hesitating briefly, Ms. Ansley said, she approached Ms. Corbett as she stood beside her vehicle. “I said, "Hi, Sherry, I want to talk to you.' And I walked around the car, and I shot her.”

        Ms. Ansley said she “didn't even think that the bullets were working” at first, since she had never shot the gun before. Then, after Ms. Corbett fell to the ground, Ms. Ansley said, “I was walking to (the neighbor's) house because I was going to kill him, too.”

        Police stopped Ms. Ansley at Ninth and Campbell, about a block away from the neighbor's home. She had a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun as well as a knife.

        Tom Nye, who serves on the historic area's board and knew both Ms. Corbett and Ms. Ansley, said he didn't know what psychiatrist Ms. Ansley might have been targeting, although he knows of one who practices in the district.

        Mostly, though, he's skeptical about Ms. Ansley's statement.

        “This is all real interesting reading, but I have yet to talk to anyone who's heard (Ms. Ansley) say any of this,” Mr. Nye said. “I'm suspicious.”

        Neighbors, however, aren't talking a whole lot about Ms. Ansley anymore, he said. They're concentrating on other things, including plans for a fountain in Ms. Corbett's honor.

        “We want to see justice done, sure,” Mr. Nye said. “But we're moving ahead. We're not going to let her destroy our lives — or Sherry's memory.”

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