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At first prosecutors initially charged Nowak – who had been designated to be a capsule communicator for the next space shuttle flight on March 15 – with attempted kidnapping but later added another charge of attempted first-degree murder; Nowak was released on $25,500 bail and allowed to go home with an electronic monitoring device around her ankle. Shipman, meanwhile, filed a restraining order against Nowak and claimed Nowak had been stalking her for two months.
How did one of NASA's very best and brightest wind up in such a desperate situation? What few people knew was that Nowak's personal life was cracking under the stress of her pressurized job. Neighbors in the affluent Houston suburb of Clear Lake – where Nowak lived with her husband, Richard, 43, a flight controller in Mission Control for the International Space Station; their son Alexander, 15; and twin 5-year-old daughters, Katrina and Alyssa – had no idea anything was wrong with the couple's 19-year marriage.
"As far as I knew, everything was fine," says David Silva, who lives across from the Nowaks' two-story brick home in a cul-de-sac. "They're good people. " Even Nowak's parents weren't aware her situation was so dire. "Her mother says she wishes she would have known that Lisa was so confused," says Nowak's cousin Tony Caputo, 58. "Her family doesn't know what to do. They are completely devastated by this."
