The family of a Liberty County woman whose death was ruled a suicide is fighting back, filing a lawsuit and publicly accusing the sheriff's office of a cover-up. At a press conference, their attorney laid out a series of allegations and demanded accountability from local law enforcement over how the case was handled from the very first day.
The lawsuit, filed under the Texas Public Information Act, is aimed at forcing the release of records the family says it has never been allowed to see. According to the attorney, Sherry Novosad was found dead in November 2024, and roughly 20 months later her relatives still have not been permitted to view the body camera video recorded by the officers who responded to the scene that day.
The attorney said the Liberty County Sheriff's Office quickly ruled the death a suicide. One of the relatives described how, in their view, the case was treated with a striking lack of care, saying the response amounted to little more than placing the body in a bag and moving on. The family says it has been left fighting for answers ever since, facing what it calls a cover-up.
Central to the family's doubts are physical details they say do not add up. According to the attorney, Novosad had unexplained bruises on her body. He also questioned how she could have shot herself with a weapon that would leave a large burn hole and send out a flame several inches long, and yet there was no serious burning found on the side of her face.
The family also points to what it describes as a troubling conflict of interest. The attorney said that four months before Novosad was found dead, the sheriff's office had responded to a threatened suicide call involving her husband, who had just learned she was having an affair with a Liberty County sheriff's investigator. The attorney said the office knew of the situation and did nothing, and he called on Sheriff Bobby Rader to resign.
Frustrated by the official handling of the case, the family turned to its own experts. The attorney said they hired forensic investigator Bruce Jeffries, who examined the scene even though some of the blood had been cleaned up. According to the attorney, that testing found male blood DNA on a curtain about 20 feet away and more male DNA on her bloody shirt, findings the family says remain unexplained to this day.