SILVERTON – Silverton is reeling from the death of Jessica McFarland, who was slain in her Silverton home in the early hours on Friday morning.
She was 32 years old, a mother of two small children.
Later on Friday, law enforcement arrested McFarland’s husband, Michael McFarland, 31, on charges of second-degree murder.
A fuller picture of Friday’s events has emerged from an arrest affidavit submitted to the court by Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Jeff Brown. It details how law enforcement came to discover Jessica McFarland’s body in a place that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds is a dangerous place for any American woman aged 15-44: Her own home.
The nature of McFarland’s death is especially painful in a town of just more than 600 people, a tight-knit mountain community where everyone knows everyone else, and many people watched her grow up. On Saturday, San Juan County Sheriff Officer John Jacobs was standing outside her home, now a crime scene encircled in fluorescent tape. He knew Jessica as a young girl, when he taught her at Silverton School.
In Silverton on Saturday, even people who weren’t close to McFarland – whose maiden name was Davis – recalled her sweet personality, with many offering words of support for her mother, Linda, and McFarland’s three grieving sisters.
McFarland’s friends remember a vibrant, loving woman who nurtured her own family with rare dedication and her friends as though they were blood.
Kendra Gurule said she’d known McFarland for 20 years and watched in admiration for two decades as McFarland transformed from a teenager uncertain of her abilities into an assured mother raising two bright young boys.
“She was amazing. One of a kind,” Gurule said.
Her friends recalled that when times got tough, McFarland, who blossomed in the role of full-time mom, would make ends meet by working in Silverton’s jewelry store and ice cream shop.
James Earl Shertz, who also knew McFarland since childhood, said she “was a great parent. And she was mom for everybody. If you needed a pair of shoes, she would give you the shirt off her back, and ask nothing in return.”
Shertz, who is several years younger than McFarland, said “She was like my sister. She was more of a sister than my real sister.”
McFarland’s friends affectionately recalled a woman with lovable weaknesses, eccentric passions and diverse hobbies. Gurule said McFarland loved her cellphone, her trucks and listening to her extensive collection of music; she recalled McFarland had a weakness for the caffeine-rich soft drink Red Bull and Marlboro reds – though she didn’t smoke cigarettes, so much as wave them around. Gurule said McFarland could spend an evening happily arguing about shoes or providing careful, generous advice to friends afflicted by paralyzing insecurities, romantic problems or financial woes.
Though many of McFarland’s friends say she possessed unusual intelligence, Gurule said McFarland was sensitive about the fact that she didn’t complete high school.
“She hated it when people asked about that. But she was very, very smart,” Gurule said.
“No matter how deep her problems were, she could make you smile. She was always concerned for everybody else’s well-being, making sure everybody was happy,” Gurule said.
Tearfully, Gurule and Shertz helped each other finish a sentence: “She was my, our role model, because she was just so happy and outgoing: a perfect mom, a loving wife.”
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
