When the sun sets over Hatteras Island, Ashley Cimino's parents remember their daughter, who was killed by her husband on July 4 in her Brier Creek home.

According to Alba and Paul Cimino, their daughter loved the Outer Banks. Ashley Cimino and her siblings spent summers at the coast while they were growing up, and the Ciminos live there now. They asked WRAL News to refer to her by her maiden name because the memory is too painful. 

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On July 4, 2018, Ashley Lauren Cimino Talarico, 30, was fatally shot before her husband, Nicholas Robert Talarico, 34, turned the gun on himself. The couple's two children were apparently not at home when the incident occurred.


Alba and Paul Cimino said they were at the couple's Brier Creek home on July 3 -- and that was the last time they saw their daughter. "She looked awful," said Alba Cimino. "She was totally exhausted and wiped out. We kept asking her, 'Honey, what's wrong? Sweetheart, what's wrong,' and she just kept saying, 'I'm tired.'"

The Ciminos said they hugged their daughter goodbye and drove back to the coast.

The next day, an officer showed up at their door and told them Ashley Cimino was dead. Her little boys, now 4 and 7, had no mom and no dad.

It wasn't until after their daughter's death that Alba and Paul Cimino learned about suicide notes they say Talarico wrote a year before.

"You never think it could be yourself," said Alba Cimino. "You never think it could hit your family -- until it does. He needed help and we wouldn't get it."

Ashley Cimino's parents say Talarico was domineering toward her, and that he made her nervous. "[She] would have to drop us because Nick's attention had to be met, and we noticed this from the very beginning," said Paul Cimino.

The Ciminos remember a bubbly daughter with a cute giggle, but Alba Cimino said that quickly changed over the years.

"Over time, I saw that disappearing," she said. "I saw her disappearing. Her friends were gone."

Experts like Allison Strickland, who works with InterAct, a Raleigh non-profit, say that's a textbook pattern in domestic abuse cases.

"It can be really hard for a family member or friend to pick up on the signs of domestic violence because, often, an abuser will work to isolate that victim from people who would pick up on those signs," said Strickland.

Ashley Cimino was among 42 domestic violence homicides reported in North Carolina from January through mid-September. Fifteen of those were murder suicides.

WRAL attempted to reach out to Talarico's parents with no success. His obituary described him as, "A devoted father whose family was the most important thing."

Ashley Cimino's parents now have a mission to empower those who feel trapped in abuse.

"You have to tell someone," said Alba Cimino. "You have to have a support system in order to get out of a relationship like this. You cannot do it on your own."