Justina Morley was fifteen years old when she took part in the brutal murder of an another teenager. According to court documents Justina Morley lured the victim Jason Sweeney to a remote location with the promise of sex where he would be fatally attacked by Edward Batzig, Domenic and Nicholas Cola. According to police the reason that Jason Sweeney was attacked is that the group knew he had just been paid. This teen killer Morley would be sentenced to 17 and a half to 35 years in prison, as of this writing she is still incarcerated. Edward Batzig, Domenic and Nicholas Cola all received life sentences.
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Justina Morley has been released from prison
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Nicholas Coia wore a blue prison uniform, handcuffs and a blank expression yesterday as he was led into court for a resentencing hearing in the brutal 2003 murder of 16-year-old Jason Sweeney.
Coia, 28, sat next to his lawyer, his back to the victim’s parents Dawn and Paul Sweeney and his sister Melissa Vereb, who were among the witnesses called to testify at the hearing to determine whether Coia’s life sentence should stand.
“My precious baby boy had been beaten to death so brutally that I had to identify him by a fresh scar on his hand,” Dawn Sweeney testified, tears streaming down her face. “I sat in the court room listening to testimony that a couple of weeks prior to Jason’s murder, the four of them originally wanted to murder me and my whole family while we slept.”
She asked that Coia’s life sentence be upheld.
Coia, 16 at the time of the killing, was convicted of first-degree murder in March 2005, along with his brother Domenic Coia and their friend Edward Batzig, for the brutal slaying of Sweeney in Fishtown. A fourth teen, Justina Morley, then 15, pleaded guilty in the slaying and was sentenced to 17 1/2 to 35 years in prison.
The three boys, all under 18 at the time of the murder, were sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, in 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that life sentences given to juveniles were a violation of the 8th amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, and required that juveniles sentenced to life be resentenced.
The resentencings must take into consideration the juvenile’s age at the time of the murder as well as other factors.
During yesterday’s hearing, Special Agent Richard Reinhold, who investigated the murder in 2003, described the vicious wounds found on Sweeney’s face and testified that Coia spent weeks plotting to kill Sweeney with the intent to steal his money.
Assistant District Attorney Jude Conroy, asked Reinhold to explain how Coia enlisted the help of Morley to lure Sweeney to the location where Coia, his brother and Batzig hacked and clubbed him to death with multiple weapons including a rock and a hatchet.
Vereb, the victim’s sister, asked that Coia’s sentence stand, saying he was incapable of change.
“Forgiving them means that it hurts less today than it did 12 years ago,” she testified. “I only ask that you find it in your judgment to understand that while some people are capable of becoming better than their past, that Coia is not. This was a well thought out murder. One where he had plenty of time to stop it from happening.”
The hearing before Common Pleas Judge Sandy L.V. Byrd continues today.
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Jason Sweeney, 16, was a brown-haired, easygoing teenager who loved working beside his father on construction jobs. His best friend was Eddie Batzig, a bespectacled 16-year-old. The girl he wanted to bring home to meet his mother was pale, slender Justina Morley, 15.
On the evening of May 30, Justina allegedly lured Jason to the Trails, a wooded area of the working-class Fishtown section of Philadelphia along the Delaware River. She promised him sex.
The two were undressing when Eddie allegedly appeared with a hatchet. With him were two other teenage boys Jason knew. One was armed with a hammer.
According to the confession of Dominic Coia, who appeared in court recently, Jason was beaten savagely and fatally. The three young men are charged as adults with murder along with Morley, who police say was part of the plot.
As Jason lay dying, Coia told police, “We took Sweeney’s wallet out and split up the money, and we partied beyond redemption.” But first, he said, the teens shared “a group hug–it was like we were all happy with what we did.”
Like any big city, Philadelphia is accustomed to almost daily murders, some of them brutal, some committed by teenagers. But this one was different, and the accused teens’ apparent callousness and utter lack of remorse have shocked the city.
The accused killers were not high on drugs. The killing was not random. It was not a crime of passion or self-defense or a drug deal gone bad.
A police detective testified that he asked Coia, 18, whether he was high on drugs during the murder. “No, I was as sober as I am now,” he replied. “It is sick, isn’t it?”
The killers planned the crime several days in advance, according to police. They sent Morley as “the bait,” Coia told police. As Sweeney lay unconscious after the first blows, they smashed his face at least a dozen times. They left with Sweeney’s $500 weekly salary, which they spent on heroin, marijuana and the depressant Xanax.
To prepare for the killing that day, Coia told police, “we must have listened to `Helter Skelter’ about 42 times.” Mass murderer Charles Manson said the Beatles song inspired him and his followers during their 1969 killing spree in Los Angeles.
Batzig, who had been Sweeney’s best friend since 4th grade, told a detective that he hit his friend’s face four or five times with a hatchet, according to court testimony.
“Jason started begging for his life, but we just kept hitting him,” Batzig told police.
At a preliminary hearing June 17, no explanation was offered for why the killers did not simply rob Jason. Jason’s father, Paul Sweeney, thinks he knows why.
“Jealousy,” he said last week in the kitchen of his Fishtown row house. “They were jealous that Jason was moving past them, growing beyond them as a good person. He wasn’t hooked on drugs like the rest of them, and they wanted vengeance.”
Coia abused heroin, marijuana and alcohol, according to his lawyer, Lee Mandell. Morley, Batzig and Coia’s brother, Nicholas, 16, abused heroin, marijuana and prescription drugs, according to court testimony.
On the day of the killing, Dominic Coia told police that the killers left the house to hide in the woods as Morley lured Jason to the site. They put on latex gloves, Coia said.
They counted down “three, two, one,” Coia said, and then they attacked.
Rachel Pittman was sixteen years old when she murdered a mother and her two children. According to court documents Rachel Pittman extensively planned out the murder to the smallest details. On the night of the murder Rachel Pittman would make her way to the home armed with a knife and a container full of gasoline.
When the older victim opened the door she would be attacked and stabbed to death, Rachel would then murder the two small children in the home. After the murders Pittman would grab the container and soak the floor with gasoline before setting it on fire. Rachel Pittman would flee the crime scene and dispose of all of the clothes she was wearing and destroyed the murder weapon. In the proceeding days she would continue to destroy anything that would link her to the triple murders.
It was over a month before Rachel Pittman would be deemed a suspect and would be arrested for the murders. This teen killer would plead guilty to the three murders and arson and would be sentenced to two life sentences with no chance of parole for thirty years.
Rachel Pittman 2023 Information
SID Number: 08932389
TDCJ Number: 01830034
Name: PITTMAN,RACHEL
Race: W
Gender: F
DOB: 1994-07-14
Maximum Sentence Date: LIFE SENTENCE
Current Facility: HOBBY
Projected Release Date: LIFE SENTENCE
Parole Eligibility Date: 2041-08-12
Offender Visitation Eligible: YES
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Rachel Pittman, a Redwater, Texas, teen who pleaded guilty last month to the 2011 murders of a mother and her two young children, planned and carefully concealed her crimes.
Preparing to Kill
Rachel Pittman, 18, secreted a four- to five-inch, wooden-handled kitchen knife in the waistband of her shorts and carried a two liter soda bottle filled with gasoline with her when she walked a short distance from her home on Farm to Market Road 991 to the house where Amanda Doss, 34, lived with her two children, Guinevere Doss, 11, and Texas Johnson, 8, according to Bowie County Sheriff’s Office reports used to create the following account.
It was about 3 a.m., May 11, 2011, when Doss answered Pittman’s knock and invited her inside, as she’d apparently done many times before. Pittman told investigators she often visited Doss and had been a baby sitter to her children. According to Pittman’s statement, she and Doss talked for a time before Pittman rose and moved toward the door, as if to leave.
Instead of heading home, Rachel Pittman fatally attacked Doss with the kitchen knife and used it to murder Guinevere and Texas as well. After killing the family, Pittman retrieved the plastic, gasoline-filled bottle she’d left outside Doss’s house, poured gas on the bodies and set the victims on fire with a lighter she’d brought for that purpose. As the blaze began to spread, Pittman fled through the same rear door she’d entered, “…and jumped the fence as Glen and Wanda Prewett were pulling up,” states an Aug. 17, 2011, report penned by BCSO Investigator Robby McCarver.
The Prewetts, who lived just a short distance from their daughter and grandchildren, arrived shortly before 5 a.m., responding to a disturbing call she answered from Guinivere minutes before. Wanda Prewett heard noises in the background and shouts of, “Mommy, mommy,” from Guinevere before the line went dead.
As the Prewetts tried in vain to save their slain loved ones, suffering severe burns in the process, Rachel Pittman returned to her home and cleaned up. The Prewetts were able to pull only Guinevere’s body from the house. Texas’ and Doss’ bodies were recovered the following day from the rubble of the family’s fire-razed home.
Pittman told McCarver that she incinerated her clothing and shoes in a burn pile behind her mother’s home after washing up in a bathroom in her own home. Tests performed on surfaces in Pittman’s bathroom following her August 2011 confession confirmed the presence of blood and support Pittman’s account.
The day after the killings, Rachel Pittman broke the blade of the murder weapon into about 20 pieces and scattered the metal scraps in the woods behind her house. She burned the knife’s wooden handle in the same pile she used to destroy her clothing.
Investigators were unable to recover any remnants of Pittman’s shoes, her clothing or the knife handle.
“The metal shank underneath would not burn and she could not cut it into pieces as she had done the blade,” McCarver stated. “She said that she took the metal piece and buried it near a log in the woods near her home.”
A week after the murders, Pittman returned with soap and water to the crime scene under cover of darkness. Pittman cleaned the fence rail she had jumped the week before.
Rachel Pittman told McCarver that she returned to sanitize the fence because she worried blood from a cut she got during the stabbings might be discovered on the fence, allowing authorities to identify her as the family’s killer. Investigators photographed the scar left on Pittman’s left forearm as well as one on a knuckle she also identified as a reminder of her murderous night in Doss’ house.
McCarver, who took Pittman’s statement, and Justice of the Peace Nancy Talley testified at a pretrial hearing that Pittman’s demeanor was calm and matter-of-fact the night she turned herself in to authorities.
A note in documents chronicling Pittman’s Aug. 12, 2011, confession indicates that the Bowie County Sheriff’s Office received a CrimeStoppers tip from a California phone number June 14, 2011, about a month after the murders, identifying Rachel Pittman as the killer. The caller provided details similar to those Pittman gave during her confession but the tip wasn’t considered a high priority lead.
Until Pittman’s mother, Renee Pettigrew, contacted Bowie County Sheriff James Prince on the evening of Aug. 12, 2011, it appeared the investigation into the triple murders had been stymied. Court documents reflect that BCSO and Texas Rangers followed up on dozens of leads and spoke to Doss’s family, friends, ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands. One by one they were eliminated as suspects.
A reward leading to an arrest in the case grew to more than $140,000 as citizens and businesses pledged money in hope of bringing a brutal killer to justice.
“She said, ‘I killed Amanda,’” Sheriff James Prince testified at a pretrial hearing.
Prince met Pettigrew and Pittman in a bank parking lot in the evening of Aug. 12, 2011, after getting a call from an hysterical Pettigrew. Prince read Rachel Pittman her rights and she and her mother rode together in Prince’s pickup to the Bi-State Justice Building in downtown Texarkana. Pittman held her Bible.
Prior to sitting down with Talley for a warning of her constitutional rights in an office at the Bi-State, Pittman was allowed to speak to her parents. Rachel Pittman ignored pleas from her father, Howard Pittman, to stay silent and ask for a lawyer.
“Rachel Pittman stated that she did not want her father, his attorney, or her mother in the room,” documents state. “She indicated that she wanted to tell the truth and everything that happened.”
Motive and Mental Illness
Rachel Pittman told McCarver she killed because she believed it was what an adult friend wanted her to do.
The woman had moved to another state five or six months before the murders. The woman, in her mid-thirties, had once lived with Pittman’s grandmother in a house near Pittman’s and Doss’ on FM 991. The woman had also lived with her boyfriend in a rental house in the same neighborhood.
Rachel Pittman had a close relationship with the woman, who told investigators she thought of Pittman as a little sister and that she and Pittman often spent time together at Doss’ home.
Pittman told McCarver she wanted to wait to kill Doss on a night when the children were not home, but that her perception of her friend’s impatience for her to act led to the murders of all three victims.
Reports from experts concerning Pittman’s mental state describe Rachel Pittman as a teen descending into psychosis and of suffering from the onset of symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.
Bowie County District Attorney Jerry Rochelle and Longview, Texas, attorney Tonda Curry, who represented Pittman along with Longview lawyer Scrappy Holmes, said they do not believe Pittman’s adult friend purposefully encouraged or threatened Pittman into the murders.
While Rachel Pittman believed her friend wanted her to kill Doss, that belief was grounded in delusional and revelational thinking, not reality, according to multiple reports from mental health experts who evaluated Pittman.
“Although it is evident she was aware her conduct was wrong and took steps to avoid detection, her delusional religious beliefs, delusions of reference and belief in ‘confirmations’ from benign events and statements led her to believe not only that her conduct was not wrong, but that it was the right thing to do,” an expert’s report states.
A second expert described Rachel Pittman as taking special meaning from innocuous statements. Pittman reportedly drew her own, delusional conclusions from statements on the television, billboards, or from conversations unrelated to her.
One expert report notes that Pittman reported hearing snakes talking like demons and seeing ghosts.
“Additionally, after the offenses, she reported seeing a pink cloud that she believed were the souls of the three victims,” a psychological report states.
Rachel Pittman was apparently motivated to confess by a deepening commitment to religion.
As Pittman’s case proceeded to trial, Curry and Holmes filed notice of their intent to plead insanity on Pittman’s behalf.
“The verdict form says, ‘Not guilty by reason of insanity.’ It doesn’t say, ‘Guilty but mentally ill,’” Curry said.
Speaking generally, Curry said jurors are often swayed to find a mentally ill defendant accused of horrific behavior guilty because of fear the defendant will be free to offend again.
Rochelle said there is a distinction between legal insanity and clinical insanity. Offenders are typically deemed competent by judges to proceed to trial as long as they understand what is happening around them and are able to assist their lawyers in preparation of a defense.
Whether a defendant should be held accountable for criminal behavior which might have been influenced by mental illness, is a question often left to a jury to decide.
Pittman was indicted for capital murder in the deaths of Doss and Guinevere and for first degree murder for Texas’ death. She pleaded guilty to two counts of first degree murder.
Had Pittman gone to trial and been convicted of capital murder, she would be required to serve more time behind bars before becoming parole eligible. Being eligible for parole does not mean parole will be granted.
Pittman was never eligible for the death penalty because of her age, 16, at the time of the murders.
Under Texas law, individuals accused of a crime are considered adults at 17. Pittman was certified to stand trial as an adult and her case was transferred from juvenile court to criminal court.
Capital murder is typically punishable in Texas by life without the possibility of parole or death by lethal injection. Pittman faced a lesser punishment range, life with parole possible after 40 years, if convicted of capital murder.
Pittman’s plea to first degree murder means she could be parole eligible after serving 30 years.
At Pittman’s plea hearing Jan. 31, 202nd District Judge Leon F. Pesek Jr. ordered the state’s file on Pittman sealed. Pesek amended his order after a Freedom of Information request was submitted to the District Attorney’s Office by the Gazette. Graphic crime scene photos and autopsy reports remain under seal.
Behind Bars
While in jail in Texarkana, Pittman’s behavior has concerned authorities. While still in a juvenile detention facility, before she was certified to face charges as an adult, Pittman was disrespectful to staff and may have had an unhealthy influence on other juvenile detainees, according to court documents used to create the following account.
“She has a following in detention where she walks around and talks about God’s forgiveness in a distorted manner,” states an official report.
When spoken to about her behavior in juvenile detention, Pittman’s attitude, “…went from fairly pleasant to stone cold,” states a report from a juvenile court official.
While in the Bi-State Justice Building jail, Pittman has fought with other inmates and tampered with the lock on her cell door.
On Jan. 8, Pittman allegedly ran down a hallway, passing a guard before attacking an inmate performing work in a laundry room. Pittman allegedly knocked out the inmate’s tooth and pepper spray was used to bring her under control.
On Sept. 1, 2012, Pittman allegedly fought with a different inmate while in a common area in the jail. On Sept. 8, 2012, Pittman stuffed paper in her cell door lock so she could open it at will. She was allegedly planning to attack the same inmate with whom she fought the week before.
On July 7, 2012, Pittman stuffed paper in her cell door lock. Pittman left her cell during a time she was supposed to be confined and unplugged a television.
On Feb. 20, 2012, Pittman used the blade from a hand pencil sharpener to crop her hair. Notes by jail staff indicate that such a, “dramatic change in appearance is unacceptable.”
Notes in one of Pittman’s mental evaluations state Pittman cut her long hair because she feared another inmate might use it against her in a fight.
Curry said Pittman should receive treatment, including anti-psychotics, while in prison. Pittman is currently being held in the Crain Unit, a women’s prison operated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Correctional Institutions Division.
Rachel Pittman is currently incarcerated at the Hobby Unit in Texas
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Rachel Pittman is serving a life sentence however is eligible for parole in 2041
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A Redwater, TX teenager accused of killing a mother and her two children has taken a plea deal.
Rachel Pittman, now 18, was charged as an adult with capital murder in the May 2011 deaths of 34-year-old Amanda Doss and 11-year-old Guinevere Doss and was facing a separate murder charge for 8-year-old Texas Johnson. Autopsies confirmed all three died from violent injuries prior to the fire, which investigators believe was set to destroy evidence of the murders.
Because she was 16 at the time of the crime, Pittman would not have been eligible for the death penalty if convicted, but she did face life in prison.
Trial was set to begin next week in Rusk County, but on Friday in Bowie County District Court, Pittman withdrew her insanity defense and plead guilty to two counts of the lesser charge of first degree murder.
Bowie County District Judge Leon Peseck, Jr. sentenced Pittman to two life sentences, with the possibility for parole after 30 years. She will not be able to appeal her sentence. Her attorney, Clifton “Scrappy” Holmes, says the deal gives her more privileges in prison than she would have had if she had gone to trial and been convicted on the capital murder charge. “This young lady entered a plea that, under the circumstances, we feel was the proper conclusion,” Holmes says.
Pittman was tearful while on the stand answering questions before the sentencing, explaining that she did not agree at first to the deal, but changed her mind after seeing photos of the victims. Pittman also hung her head down and cried as Amanda Doss’ father tearfully spoke, saying that Amanda had trusted her, recounting how they had provided refuge for the teenager when she ran away from home and even invited her to Thanksgiving dinner.
In a statement released by the Bowie County District Attorney’s Office, District Attorney Jerry Rochelle said, “The Bowie County District Attorney’s Office is relieved that this will conclude this case and spare the victim’s family the burden of a jury trial. The district attorney’s office respects the family’s decision to allow the defendant to plea to a life sentence and avoid both a trial as well as any possibility of years of appellate battle. Our hearts and prayers go out to the families. We hope this brings them closure and some sense of justice.”
Valessa Robinson was just fifteen years old when she took part in her mothers murder. According to court documents Valessa began dating a much older teen named Adam Davis who was already a convicted felon by the time he was eighteen years old. Needless to say Valessa’s mother was not happy and tried to get her daughter to end the relationship however instead of leaving Adam Davis the young couple planned a murder.
On the night of the murder Valessa, Adam and another teen named Jon Whispel were high on LSD when they attacked Valessa’s mother. The trio attempted to murder the woman in several different ways from injecting bleach into her veins. In the end the woman was stabbed multiple times causing her death. The victim’s body was shoved into a garbage can. The trio would steal the woman’s van and leave the Tampa Bay Florida area
Soon the trio would attract attention and would be stopped by police in Texas following a brief chase. Initially the police thought that Valessa had no role in her mother’s brutal murder however that would soon change. In the end the trio would be sent back to Florida to stand trial. Valessa and Jon were given long prison sentences, This teen killer was released in 2015 after serving nearly fifteen years. Whispel is due to be released this year. Adam Davis who confessed to murdering Valessa’s mother was sentenced to death and remains on Florida death row.
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Nearly two decades after taking part in her mother’s murder, Valessa Robinson is now a mother herself, according to public photos posted on her Facebook page.
In her profile picture, dated late September 2015, Robinson is showing off her new baby boy.
Robinson, now 32, was released from prison in 2013 after serving 13 years of her 20-year sentence. She was convicted of third-degree murder in the 1998 murder of her mother, Vicki Robinson, a 49-year-old real estate agent and a single mother of two.
Vicki Robinson vanished from her Carrollwood home on June 27, 1998, after Valessa Robinson, then 15, her boyfriend Adam Davis and friend Jon Whispel plotted the mother’s death.
The trio took LSD before Davis, now on Florida’s death row, injected Vicki Robinson with bleach and stabbed her to death.
Robinson’s Facebook says she’s in a relationship with Hunter Markarian. They live in South Florida.
Markarian’s Facebook page shows public photos of the baby playing with his own feet earlier this week. Friends of the couple commented on the photos calling the baby a “cutie.” The child appears to have been born in August.
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Valessa Robinson was released from prison in 2015
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Jon Whispel, who charged with assisting in the 1998 murder of Vicki Robinson has been released, the Florida Department of Corrections has confirmed.
He was released on Thursday.
Robinson’s murder in 1998 shocked Carrollwood and the Tampa Bay area. The crime also gained national attention.
Adam Davis, Robinson’s daughter, Valessa and Whispel plotted to kill Robinson. At the time, Davis was 19 and Valessa was 15.
Investigators said they killed Vicki because she didn’t approve of Valessa’s relationship and was planning to send her daughter to a Christian reform school.
Authorities found the three teens injected Vicki with bleach, stabbed her and stuffed her body in a garbage can.
Davis was put on death row. Whispel was sentenced to 25 years and was originally set to be released in 2020. Valessa was released from Homestead Correctional Institution in 2013.
In June 2017, Davis’ sentence was vacated after his requests under the 2016 Hurst v. Florida ruling.
Jasmine Richardson was twelve years old when she murdered her entire family in a case that shocked the murder. According to court documents Jasmine and her much older boyfriend Jeremy Steinke would murder her mother, father and her younger brother.
Due to her age at the time police initially thought that Jasmine Richardson had been kidnapped however when they caught up with the couple the scary truth came out. This teen killer would be convicted on three counts of first degree murder however due to Canada sentencing laws when it comes to young offenders she was only sentenced to the maximum penalty of ten years in custody.
Jeremy Steinke who now goes by the name of Jackson May would be sentenced to three life in prison sentences with parole eligibility after twenty five years. Jasmine Richardson has been released from custody
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SOMEWHERE in Canada, perhaps near her parents’ old home in Medicine Hat, Alberta, where she massacred her own family, Jasmine Richardson is walking free.
It is 10 years since she slashed her little brother’s throat and left him to die among his blood-spattered toys, and waited on as her boyfriend stabbed her parents to death in a violent frenzy.
Three months ago, Jasmine Richardson faced a final court hearing and, freed of any court-ordered conditions, restrictions or supervision. She offered no apology or expression of remorse for what she had done.
Now the 22-year-old is living quietly in the community at a secret location. Richardson’s name cannot be published in her home country, where she is known as “JR” and she is even being described as “a poster child” for rehabilitation. But residents in the ordinary suburban neighbourhood near the Richardson family death house cannot forget and are not so sure that Jasmine Richardson should be living among them. “If you’re old enough to do the crime, you should do the time,” a woman told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Neighbours cannot forget April 23, 2006, a bright but freezing Spring day when a young boy spied bodies through the window of the Richardson family home, sparking a discovery that was to make Canadian criminal history. By that time, Richardson and her boyfriend, 23-year-old Goth and self-styled “300-year-old werewolf”, Jeremy Steinke, were on the run.
The neat grey weatherboard home with the gable roof and trimmed green lawn held grisly secrets that would shock the police who attended the scene. It was some time the previous night Jasmine Richardson, then aged 12, stabbed eight-year-old Jacob to death while her boyfriend, with her encouragement, murdered her parents. Detectives entering the home found Richardson’s parents in the basement and her brother in an upstairs bedroom.
They would later piece together the murder scene: Jasmine and Jeremy entered the home and Steinke killed his girlfriend’s mother first. Wearing a neoprene mask and carrying a knife he stabbed 48-year-old Debra Richardson 12 times, including a 12cm deep piercing to her heart. Hearing his wife’s screams, Marc Richardson, 42, came down the stairs to her aid and was set upon by Steinke who stabbed him 24 times, including nine times in the back. Jasmine reportedly wanted to take on her brother, eight-year-old Jacob, and climbed upstairs where he lay in his bedroom and stabbed him five times, including a wide, deep slash across his neck. Jacob would be found lying on his bed, surrounded by blood-splattered toys. When police arrived they at first feared 12-year-old Jasmine’s absence meant she had been kidnapped by the crazed murderer.
In reality, the pair had plotted the killings so they could run away together. Jasmine Richardson had met Steinke at a punk rock concert and immediately became intrigued by his goth lifestyle. Photographs on her MySpace page show how the clean cut young girl began changing under Steinke’s influence. Steinke had grown up with an alcoholic mother whose partners abused him. He was bullied by his classmates at school. A court later heard that by the age of 13, Steinke was diagnosed with depression and hyperactivity and later tried to hang himself.
Over the next 10 years he adopted the persona of the “300 year old werewolf” and wore a vial of blood around his neck. He had a user account at the VampireFreaks.com website and in 2006 he and Jasmine Richardson fell in love. Paramedics remove the bodies from the house where the murder scene traumatised detectives for years to come. When Jasmine’s parents discovered the relationship they forbade her from seeing him or going out. Online accounts belonging to both Steinke and Jasmine revealed that it was she who came up with the murder plan. Writing to Jeremy online, she said “I have this plan. It begins with me killing them and ends with me living with you.” Another message Steinke wrote on his Windows Live Spaces account about her parents read “Their throats I want to slit. They will regret the s*** they have done. Especially when I see to it that they are gone. They shall pay for their insulince [sic]. Finally there shall be silence. Their blood shall be payment!”.
Jasmine Richardson discussed her plans to kill her parents with her friends, but no-one believed her. On the night of the murders, Jasmine would later testify, her brother Jacob pleaded for his life and emitted a gurgling sound as she stabbed him, Steinke finishing him off by slitting his throat. She would later say that she killed him because it was too cruel to leave him without their parents. Two hours after the deaths Jasmine and Steinke were seen laughing and kissing at a restaurant. Soon after the pair’s arrest, Steinke asked Jasmine Richardson to marry him via letters from his prison cell, and she agreed.
Asked later why they committed the murders, Jasmine Richardson said: “I loved him so much. I thought it would bring us closer together”. In June 2007, aged 14, Jasmine Richardson went on trial for three counts of first degree murder. She was found guilty on all three and sentenced to 10 years jail, the maximum allowed by Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act. In 2008, Steinke was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to three concurrent life sentences in prison, with an earliest parole date of 25 years. His lawyers argued that Steinke was in an alcohol and drug-fuelled haze when he “snapped” and stabbed Jasmine’s parents. They described him as a lovestruck, immature man who would do anything to keep the pre-teen girl’s affection. His friends testified that he had asked for help to get rid of the Richardsons because he was worried she would leave him if he didn’t. He claimed in his evidence that it was Jasmine who slashed her brother’s throat while he watched from a doorway.
The prosecution fought Steinke’s attempts to lessen the charges to second-degree murder to manslaughter, saying “a father … fought for his family’s life to his death. You had [Medicine Hat] police officers who mourned the loss … years later of the terrible things they saw.” Believed to be the youngest person ever convicted of a multiple murder in Canada, Jasmine was committed to a psychiatric hospital for four years. She spent a further four under conditional community supervision and was allowed to attend Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. Announcing her absolute freedom in May, Queen’s Bench Justice Scott Brooker told her “I think your parents and brother would be proud of you. Clearly you cannot undo the past; you can only live each day with the knowledge you can control how you behave and what you do each day.”
Some of her old neighbours in Medicine Hat agreed Jasmine Richardson “should be given a second chance”. But Sue England told CBC she wondered “how she will continue on with her life with that being a part of her past life? … I have sympathy for her, but you can’t imagine anybody doing something like that”. Steinke has changed his name in prison to Jackson May and made a failed appeal against his sentence.
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Jasmine Richardson was released from prison and given a new identity
Meaghan Rice would conspire with one of her boyfriends, David Paulson, to murder another boyfriend Randall Mercier. According to court documents in Arizona, Maeghan Rice would pick up Randall Mercier with David Paulson hiding under a blanket in the back seat of the truck. When the victim was inside of the vehicle he would be brutally stabbed by Paulson. Meaghan Rice who was sixteen years old at the time of the murder would take four years to go to trial where the teen killer would be sentenced to twelve and a half years in prison. David Paulson would receive a life sentence.
Meaghan Rice 2023 Information
Last Name First Name Middle Initial RICE MAEGHAN
Gender Height (inches) Weight Hair Color FEMALE 64 118 BROWN
Eye Color Ethnic Origin Custody Class Admission BLUE CAUCASIAN Medium/High 08/19/2011
Projected Eligible Release Date Prison Release Date Release Type 12/21/2020 Sentence Expiration Date
Most Recent LocationAs of DateComplexUnit Last Movement Status PERRYVILLEAS PC-PV LUMLEY MDM 02/28/2018 ACTIVE
Meaghan Rice Other News
A 20-year-old Apache Junction woman was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison on a charge of second-degree murder in connection with a case where she conspired with one of her boyfriends to kill another out of jealously while driving him in a pickup truck in 2008.
Meaghan Rice was sentenced for the crime in Pinal County Superior Court before Judge Boyd Johnson on Monday, three years after 17-year-old Randall Mercier bled to death in a ditch along Tomahawk Road north of Superstition Boulevard after he was attacked by David Paulson, also 17.
On June 20, 2008, Rice, then 16, picked up Mercier while Paulson hid under a blanket in the back cruiser cab of the truck. Rice said a code word for Paulson who killed Mercier out of jealousy, according to Capt. Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the Apache Junction Police Department. Paulson stabbed Mercier at least 20 times before the boy was able to escape from the truck and collapse in the ditch where he died.
Paulson was found guilty of first-degree murder on Friday by a jury in Pinal County Superior Court before Judge Gilberto Figueroa for killing Mercier.
After the crime, Paulson fled to Salt Lake City, where he later was captured by the U.S. Marshal’s Service Fugitive Task Force.
More than 500 people attended a candlelight vigil for Mercier and more than 400 people attended his funeral.
Kelly said Meaghan Rice played one boyfriend off the other who both were jealous of each other, but Mercier was the one who wound up getting killed.
A sentencing date for Paulson has not been scheduled.
Paulson and Rice, who both were tried as adults, have been incarcerated in a Pinal County jail since the crime.
Meaghan Rice More News
A man who stabbed an Apache Junction teenager to death in 2008 when he was himself a teenager was sentenced to life in prison on Monday.
Both David Paulson, 21, and Randall Davis-Mercier were 17 when Maeghan Rice, 16, picked up Mercier the evening of June 20, 2008, in a pickup truck. According to police, Rice then said a code word that triggered Paulson to come out from his hiding place under a blanket and stab Mercier as many as 20 times, reportedly out of jealousy. Mercier was able to escape the truck, but collapsed and bled to death on the side of the road.
Paulson was found guilty by a Pinal County jury following a two-week trial last month. Rice, a Gold Canyon resident, was then Paulson’s 16-year-old girlfriend.
After the killing, Paulson fled to Salt Lake City, where he later was captured by the U.S. Marshal’s Service Fugitive Task Force.
“David Paulson committed a particularly heinous crime,” said Pinal County Attorney James Walsh. “This was a long and hard trial for the victim’s family, and I want to offer my condolences.”
More than 500 people attended a candlelight vigil for Mercier, and more than 400 went to his funeral.
Rice, now 20, has been held in the Pinal County Adult Detention Center since her arrest. She was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison for second-degree murder in connection with the killing.
Paulson, who has been kept in the Pinal County Adult Detention Center since the crime, will be eligible for parole after he serves 25 years in prison, according to the Pinal County Attorney’s Office.
Eye Color Ethnic Origin Custody Class Admission BROWN CAUCASIAN Medium/Low 09/21/2011
Projected Eligible Release Date Prison Release Date Release Type Life LIFE
Most Recent LocationAs of DateComplexUnitLast MovementStatusYUMAASPC-Y CHEYENNE UNIT05/08/2019ACTIVE
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