Murdered influencer Sara Gilson’s first husband never felt right about his ex’s relationship with the man who ultimately killed her, and he’d been begging the mother of his two children to steer clear for years, he said after her death last week.

Gilson, 43, and her estranged husband, 48-year-old Jeremiah “Shawn” Duffey, were found shot to death in an apparent murder-suicide late Thursday as police rushed to respond to 911 calls that came from her residence and then from a neighbor’s house.

Duffey had recently been accused of molesting a 15-year-old girl, prompting Gilson to obtain an emergency protective order barring him from the house and from coming within 100 yards of her, according to The Oklahoman. On July 11 Gilson posted a TikTok video branding him a pedophile. Less than two weeks later, she was dead.

But the troubles hadn’t started there.

“Shawn had been a risk for her since they got together,” Gilson’s ex-husband, Lyle Landers, told People. “She had been stuck in a relationship where domestic abuse seemed ‘OK.’ I had begged her for five years to get away from him. I had offered to help her, in any way I could, to get away from him. But he seemed to have some sort of control over her, and she couldn’t seem to get away.”

Landers and Gilson had been divorced for seven years and were on good terms, especially when it came to parenting their two children. She was a hairstylist as well as a lifestyle and beauty influencer.

“It had been the best thing in the world for our kids, but also for us,” Landers told People. “We coparent as well as anyone, and it has shown in our kids. She was a wonderful mother and would die for her children. In fact, her trying to protect children is what ultimately led to her death.”

Gilson had filed two protective orders against Duffey in 2021, but they had been dismissed after she did not show up at that hearing to argue her case, The Oklahoman reported. The molestation claim had been turned over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tulsa.

Her family, including Landers, lauded her commitment to motherhood and her children, and her love of life. An online funding appeal for Gilson’s two children, “the center of her world,” had surpassed its initial $28,000 goal on Sunday evening and had crept toward a new $35,000 goal.

“Sara was a fun, life of the party girl, who loved her kids fiercely and would fight to the death for them,” Landers wrote. “What happened to her last night is unfathomable to me.”

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