Murderous New York grandmother committed murder-suicide to give her son sole custody: heartbreaking lawsuit

The woman who killed her granddaughter's mother before committing suicide did so as part of an elaborate, sick plot to give her Upper East Side son sole custody of the 4-year-old, new court documents show.

The disturbing Manhattan files also reveal heartbreaking details about the lives of victim Marisa Galloway's parents after the horrific murder and suicide that robbed them of their daughter.

Terminally ill 65-year-old former Chicago parole officer Kathleen Leigh shot and killed Galloway – a 45-year-old special education teacher who had a child with Leigh's son, Zachariah Reed – on a leafy Manhattan street last month and then committed suicide.

Now Galloway's parents, Nancy and John Galloway, have filed an emergency motion in court claiming that Reed fled to his “multimillion-dollar home” in Chicago with their beloved granddaughter Lili under the guise of “mourning” Leigh's death and barred the Galloways from having any contact – not even a video call – with the child.

“Clearly, [Reed’s] Mother had a premeditated plan to kill Marisa to gain custody of her son,” the court documents state. “Unfortunately [Reed] has shown his firm intention to pursue the same goals as his mother by denying us any access to Lili for almost three weeks.”

The grandparents, who live in Cape May, New Jersey, have asked a Manhattan Supreme Court judge to transfer Marisa's visitation rights, negotiated in a 2022 custody agreement with Reed, to them, according to legal documents filed Friday.

According to the lawsuit, they also demand that Reed be forced to live in the Big Apple until Lili turns 18 so that she can maintain a close relationship with her grandparents and her half-sister Mariel, the one-year-old daughter Marisa had with a sperm donor.

Police sources told The Post that Mariel is currently in the custody of the Galloways.

Nancy described in a heartbreaking affidavit the loving and “approachable” relationship she and her husband had with Lili, seeing her two to three times a month, often for several nights at a time, as Marisa brought the children to her home in the Garden State or when they visited Marisa and the girls in town.

“When we did not see [Lili]we communicated almost every day via Facetime,'” Nancy wrote in an affidavit.

Nancy and John were actively involved in the girl's upbringing, even changing her diapers and feeding her when she was a baby, and even as she grew older, the grandparents developed special activities that they enjoyed doing with her, the file said.

John and Lili love working in the garden together. They water the flowers and pick cherry tomatoes from his garden – which he takes care of until the girl comes to him, Nancy's affidavit says.

And Nancy loves teaching Lili French and baking cakes with the child. “Her favorite thing is beating eggs,” Nancy tells the newspapers.

When Nancy and Lili completed a 150-piece puzzle of the United States in just over an hour, the little girl was “so proud,” the file says.

“While Marisa has always been the best mother, we would love to be involved in all aspects of caring for an infant, a toddler, and ultimately the little girl Lili is today,” Nancy wrote.

Nancy said she was “extremely uncomfortable” being forced to file the application, but feared Lili might become alienated from her mother's family if they did not intervene.

The grandmother described the story of Marisa and Reed's “turbulent relationship” since the couple's separation and their “contentious” custody battle.

She claimed the couple had been together before Marisa's pregnancy, but said their relationship ended – “triggered by the interference of [Reed’s] Mother.”

Marisa and Reed had lived together until she was “forced to move out … by [Reed] on July 25, 2021, because Marisa feared for her safety,” the affidavit states.

On November 4, 2022, the two finally agreed on custody of Lili. The mother was allowed to keep nine of the 14 nights with her, the remaining nights were Reed's time with the girl, according to court documents.

The estranged couple also agreed that they would both live within the five boroughs of New York City until Lili graduated from high school, unless they both agreed otherwise or the court ordered otherwise, the filing said.

Their custody agreement included a clause stating that the custody terms would be “binding” on Marisa and Reed's estate and executors should anything happen to them, the lawsuit says.

Nancy stated in the filing that Marisa “was always very interested in Lili having a sibling,” and so she decided to “undertake the Herculean task of having a second child with an anonymous sperm donor to give Lili either a brother or a sister.”

Lili was so “proud” to be Mariel's older sister, and “from the second Mariel was born, she and Lili had a very special relationship,” Nancy says in the document.

Lili sings Mariel songs, plays with her little sister's “stuffed animals” and paints pictures for her, including of her family, Nancy says in the affidavit.

When Mariel woke up from a nap, Lili would feed her Cheerios or bananas and perform funny dances and sing to her, the filing said.

“On July 26, 2024, all of our lives changed forever,” wrote a heartbroken Nancy.

That day, Marisa — a former volunteer track and field coach at Fordham University and board member of the Central Park Track Club — had packed her bags and put Mariel in her Honda Civic to spend five nights with her parents in New Jersey. She planned to pick Lili up from her father's house before leaving town, court records say.

But Leigh approached Marisa as she was loading something into the trunk and shot her once in the back of the head and again in the back before turning the gun on herself.

Leigh was terminally ill with cancer and lived with Reed in his apartment on East 79th Street, where Lili also stayed during Reed's visiting hours.

Before her heinous crime, Leigh had scribbled a seven-page letter “for the police” in which she described how she believed Marisa was trying to alienate Lili from Reed. She also expressed suspicion that Marisa had abused Lili – even though Child Protective Services had cleared Marisa in two investigations initiated by Reed and even though friends and family reported that Marisa had been nothing more than a doting mother.

“She took the child away from the mother to make her son happy… it's shocking,” a law enforcement source told the Post about Leigh immediately after the murder-suicide. “I've seen a lot of crap, but this is biblical crap.”

In court documents, Nancy says she and her husband have asked Reed to speak to Lili “multiple times” since the horror. They were concerned about how she was doing after the loss of her mother and because the young sisters needed to comfort each other. But Reed did not even allow them to see her on video calls.

“We have no idea how [Lili] does, or what [Reed] Lili even told us about her mother,” the court documents say. “This is more than unacceptable and must be corrected immediately.”

The grandparents say they are so committed that they stay at Marisa's East 86th Street apartment during weekday visits with Lily. They also require that Lili have daily video calls with Mariel.

The Galloways' attorney and the attorney who represented Reed in his first custody battle with Marisa both did not immediately respond to The Post's requests for comment. A valid phone number for Reed could not immediately be found.