Hilton Head murder victim told police about gunman’s violent threats. Was enough done?
During an unannounced Jan. 30 visit to Catherine Warrington’s home near Old Town Bluffton, her ex-partner Dustin Linsley allegedly told her, “We have two options: Either I kill you, or I will kill you and kill myself.”
Less than three weeks later, according to police, Linsley did just that.
Warrington, 50, and Hilton Head Island man David Duffey, 62, were fatally shot after a Feb. 19 dinner party in the island’s North Forest Beach neighborhood.
Beaufort County deputies quickly determined Linsley was the suspected shooter and used license plate reading-cameras to track him down to his apartment on Bluffton’s Promenade Street. After hours of negotiations with the suspect over the phone, police forced entry into the unit to find Linsley dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
On Feb. 2, two weeks before the fatal shooting, Warrington filed a report with the Bluffton Police Department alleging Linsley had come to her home unannounced, threatened her several times and pointed a gun at her and her cat. He never touched her, Warrington said, but at one point in the multi-hour visit when Linsley reportedly “chased” her around the kitchen counter, she believed he was going to sexually assault her.
Linsley was becoming “increasingly possessive” of her, Warrington told police, and was upset about a date she had with another man that past weekend. She believed he was “hacking” her phone and didn’t know how he would otherwise know about the date.
Warrington ultimately declined to pursue charges against Linsley, according to the report, saying she “didn’t want to ruin Dustin’s life.”
After also interviewing Linsley, BPD Corporal Richard Ramirez determined there was no probable cause to arrest him for domestic violence. The case was closed three days later, according to the police report; reached by phone, Ramirez deferred questions to the Bluffton Police Department.
In the wake of the grisly murder-suicide that echoed Linsley’s alleged threats, questions remain about how the tragedy could have been prevented, and the systems in place to help victims of domestic violence.
Bluffton Chief of Police Joe Babkiewicz said his officers hadn’t verified Linsley’s claim that he was moving back to New Jersey after the alleged Jan. 30 incident. To the chief’s knowledge, the suspect wasn’t given a mental health evaluation. Warrington was assigned a victim’s advocate but was not given a formal lethality assessment, a popular research-based screening tool that likely would have flagged her as “high risk” for domestic homicide.
Babkiewicz called the outcome “unfortunate” and “horrific” but said his officers did exactly what they were trained to do.
“Typically when something tragic like this happens, people are going to go back and look at history and things like that,” Babkiewicz said. “All I can say is all of my officers are properly trained and professional ... We can’t just go out and arrest people; we have to make sure all the elements fit. That’s what my officers do, and that’s what they did on this situation.”
Lacking camera footage or an eyewitness account of the alleged Jan. 30 domestic incident, and observing no visible injuries to Warrington, Bluffton police did not have probable cause to arrest Linsley or search his home, according to Babkiewicz.
“In this case, I don’t think that there was any physical contact made between the two,” Babkiewicz said. “And so it just made it very, very difficult to determine what exactly happened.”
Kristin Dubrowski, CEO of the regional nonprofit Hopeful Horizons, said Warrington’s story reflects a sobering statistic about domestic homicide: 75% of women who are killed by their intimate partner had recently left the relationship.
“One of the big questions we get is, ‘I don’t understand why she doesn’t just leave,’ like it’s simple,” Dubrowski said. “And here we have a situation where somebody did leave.”
Dubrowski — whose organization offers legal services, counseling and a support hotline for domestic violence survivors in Beaufort, Jasper, Allendale, Colleton and Hampton counties — said she was happy to see that BPD’s victim advocate followed up with Warrington about how to apply for a restraining order and resources like counseling and shelter options.
“That was nice to see, and we hope that happens on every call. We do get the feedback that that does happen,” Dubrowski said. “We know that when victims are connected with an organization like Hopeful Horizons, the risk of lethality decreases.”
Warrington grew up in Tarboro, North Carolina, a small town about an hour east of Raleigh. She was a fourth-generation student at the nearby Saint Mary’s School, an Episcopal boarding school where she graduated from high school and attended college. Those who knew her spoke of Warrington’s intelligence, work with charities and her willingness to help those around her.
“Cassie was very big on mentoring young women in their careers,” said Katherine Liskoff, who was once Warrington’s real estate agent in New Jersey. “I thought that was wonderful.”
Bluffton police’s investigation
Warrington and Linsley had dated and lived together in Manasquan, New Jersey, she told police on Feb. 2. Both worked at the same Boston-based company, Fidelity Investments.
The couple had “multiple” domestic violence situations while living in New Jersey, Warrington said; a search of the state’s online court records indicates none led to an arrest. Warrington moved to Bluffton within the past year after she and Linsley “decided to part ways,” she told police.
Linsley was approached and detained by the same Bluffton police corporal the next day near his Promenade Street apartment, the report says. He told the officer that after Warrington moved to South Carolina, he followed her to the area “with the hopes of repairing their relationship.” His new apartment in Old Town Bluffton was about a half-mile from Warrington’s home.
In his police interview, Linsley denied threatening Warrington, saying he had been at her house Jan. 30 but only to “make soup” and do landscaping work at her request. He told the officer he had left his firearm in his apartment that night, according to the police report.
Linsley told the officer he was “frustrated” about his ex-girlfriend’s recent date because he had moved to Bluffton solely to fix their relationship. After a “minor verbal altercation” with Warrington that night, he said, Linsley left her home and decided to move back to New Jersey. The report noted he was carrying cleaning products as he cleared out the apartment and packed his belongings.
“We don’t know if (Linsley) ever left the state, but we do know that after this horrific incident ... he came back to the apartment where he was staying at, and he had a friend who was down there to help him move,” Babkiewicz said. “So we don’t know what the plan was — if he was going to try to get away right after this incident — but it looked like he was packed up and ready to go.”
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Detective Kate Cooler, who serves as the Bluffton Police Department’s victim advocate, called Warrington Feb. 3 and discussed her relationship with Linsley “at length,” the report says. Warrington told the detective the couple had “numerous” verbal disputes in the past but no physical altercations while living in South Carolina.
Cooler informed Warrington about shelter options and counseling services offered through Hopeful Horizons, noting in her report Warrington “was not interested in going to a shelter.” Cooler then sent Warrington information about applying for a restraining order through Bluffton Magistrate Court.
Reached via phone last week, Cooler said she was unsure if Warrington ever filed for a restraining order against Linsley.
Speaking to whether Warrington’s killing could have been prevented by police, Cooler said that even if Linsley had been charged and arrested, he likely would’ve been quickly released on a personal recognizance bond or a small cash bond.
“Mr. Linsley did not have an extensive criminal history; he did not have anything that would have kept him in Beaufort County Detention Center,” she said. “To say if he had been arrested two weeks prior, if that would have changed something or not, that’s within him as a human being. But in my experience, he would not have probably still been in a detention facility.”
Cooler, who joined BPD in 2023 after years as a patrol officer for the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, said she approached Warrington’s case with the same sensitivity she brings to any other incident.
“The care and the compassion that I showed to Ms. Warrington were the same that I have done for every victim that I’ve made contact with, no matter the circumstances,” she said, adding that she informed Warrington about her rights as a victim under state law. “All the same resources, all the same information — I pour my heart into what I do as a victim advocate.”
Case included ‘high indicators of lethality’
Warrington is one of thousands of yearly victims of domestic homicide — a crime that more than doubled in occurrence from 2019 to 2024, according to the FBI. Nearly 80% of victims were women.
Statistics show South Carolina has a particularly high rate of femicide, or the killing of women by men. A long-term data review by the Violence Policy Center showed the Palmetto State ranked in the top 10 for femicide rates for 23 out of 25 years.
State law offers some protections for women facing domestic violence, especially when it involves firearms, the most common weapon type used in the crime.
A law enacted in 2015 instituted temporary or lifetime bans on firearm and ammunition ownership for South Carolina residents convicted of domestic violence — but it does not explicitly require those people to surrender their firearms, nor does it authorize the removal of guns or ammo from scenes of domestic violence, according to the Giffords Law Center.
Other efforts aim to identify the risk factors that often precede domestic homicide, helping police know when to enact additional protections.
Used by police departments across the country since its inception in 2005, the Lethality Assessment Program is a short evaluation designed to predict when a victim of domestic violence might later be killed by their partner.
The LAP screens for concerning criteria like past instances of partner strangulation, threats with a weapon and jealous behavior. Its 11 questions are meant to be asked by police at domestic violence scenes, whether or not there was probable cause for arrest, the National Institute of Justice says.
Warrington’s relationship with Linsley would likely have met at least six of the LAP’s 11 criteria, according to a review of her statements in the Bluffton police report: a partner threatening her with a weapon, threatening to kill her, having access to a gun, displaying violent or constant jealous behavior, following her and being recently separated after living together.
Answering “yes” to either of the first two questions automatically triggers a safety protocol: Warrington would have been referred to a local service group and informed by police that she was at high risk of becoming a domestic homicide victim, according to Dubrowski.
“Some of those (lethality indicators) are present in this case,” Dubrowski said. “From the information I have, it sounded like stalking is a factor ... but definitely threats with a weapon and threatening to murder [Warrington], those are all high indicators of lethality.”
BPD officers do not administer lethality assessments at domestic violence scenes, Babkiewicz said, but some victims who are wary about pressing charges are later given the screening through the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office.
Another potentially life-saving effect of an LAP screening is the clarity its simple questions offer some victims — especially those who might be “desensitized” to the realities of their abusive relationship, according to Dubrowski.
“When we do the lethality assessment with our clients, it helps them see the full picture, because when you’re living in it every day, you become used to it,” she said. “Something like that may have helped (Warrington) feel like, ‘I really need to take this seriously, and I need to plan for my safety. He has a gun; he knows where I live. He’s never followed through before, but this could be the time.’”
Hopeful Horizons and other regional advocacy groups like the S.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault have advocated for police to implement the LAP in their domestic cases statewide, saying the program helps connect survivors with “immediate, life-saving support.”
To any Lowcountry residents who see a piece of themselves in Warrington’s scenario, Dubrowski had a simple message: “You don’t have to do this alone.”
“Please reach out for help. You can call Hopeful Horizons, even to just get some information over the phone, even if you’re thinking, ‘I might want to do this lethality assessment; I might want to look at red flag behavior,’” she said, adding that victims can also speak with trusted friends or relatives about making a safety plan to leave an abusive relationship.
Dubrowski said it’s difficult to gauge in retrospect what could have been done differently to prevent any case of domestic homicide. Her organization, though, hopes to reduce its occurrence by continuing its education and advocacy work and offering a wide range of resources.
“We’re trying to solve the problem by doing prevention work, right?” she said. “The person who’s causing the harm is the one who’s deciding to pull the trigger. We don’t have any control over that — we can just do what we can to provide services and support for the victim.”
This story was originally published March 3, 2026 at 9:59 AM.
