Husband acquitted of murder after wife mysteriously drowns in toilet bowl

In this episode of Crime Watch Daily Updates: How does one woman end up dead after allegedly drowning in a toilet bowl?

Today we’re looking at the case of Tracy Cusick, a 32-year-old woman who lived in Ottawa, Illinois, with her firefighter and bar-owning husband and their children. The family seemed content on the outside, but Tracy reportedly dealt with her own inner demons as she battled substance abuse with methadone, a powerful painkiller.

On January 17, 2006, Tracy’s husband, Kenneth, found her unresponsive in a bathroom with her head inside the toilet and called 911. Paramedics transported her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Initially, the autopsy report said she died by drowning, and there was a small amount of methadone still in her system. The coroner listed her manner of death as undetermined, but that didn’t satisfy some law enforcement officials.

The Ottawa Police Chief dove into Tracy’s case and after looking through autopsy photos, found a small cut on her chin and forehead. Years after her death, her body was exhumed and a coroner’s jury determined she died by homicide because some of her injuries reportedly could not have been possible without some sort of force from another person.

Tracy’s husband, Kenneth, was arrested in February 2017 on suspicion of first-degree murder.

He went to trial in 2019, but a jury found him not guilty of murder.

Following the acquittal, Kenneth sued the Ottawa Police Chief, the LaSalle County State Attorney, and other officials in federal court because he alleged, they framed him for Tracy’s death. Kenneth’s lawsuit argues his reputation was destroyed and he endured years of pain and suffering as a result of the murder charge against him. He claimed the law enforcement officials kept going after him as a means of political gain.

As of January 2023, that case has not yet been tried.

Let’s look back at the case of a young mother whose death baffled the community