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Investigative Unit: Stabbing victim had asked for protective order against alleged killer once before

The WBRZ Investigative Unit has obtained more documents showing the rocky relationship history that led to two deaths last week.

According to Baton Rouge Police, 28-year-old Steven Heinrich stabbed 23-year-old Stasy Charles to death before crashing his car and setting himself on fire.

Court documents show Charles had tried to protect herself from Heinrich multiple times before her death.

In a protective order request filed in October in family court, Charles says Heinrich was physically abusive. On a form, she checked boxes indicating he punched, shoved, and threatened her life with a weapon. However, in her written description of the abuse, she did not mention violence. Instead, she stated he was relentlessly harassing and stalking her and her family through social media.

Read previous Investigative Unit story detailing another family's encounter with Heinrich here. 

Heinrich was not served with that initial protective order by Charles because officers couldn't find him.
The matter was ultimately dismissed because Charles did not appear in court.

A month later, Heinrich was arrested for misdemeanor domestic abuse against Charles, and she was granted a protective order then. In the police report, Charles told officers Heinrich had been beating her all day. Police noted cuts on her right side and bruising on her stomach. 

Heinrich claimed he was defending himself and was not the aggressor. He was issued a $2,500 bond by Commissioner Kina Kimble. A week later, he stabbed Charles to death.

At that hearing, prosecutors told Commissioner Kimble that Heinrich had been arrested twice before out of state - once for criminal mischief and again for violating a protective order.

However, we don't know how much detail was given on those previous cases.

According to ADA Tracey Barbera, while they had access to his rap sheet showing those previous arrests, several protective orders filed in New York were not listed in the evidence presented to the court.

Baton Rouge Police made note of the existing protective orders in their press release about Charles' death after the fact.

District Attorney Hillar Moore, who is currently out of the country, did not want to comment until he has all the facts in this case, but said that his office is looking into it.

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