Delilah Evans was a seventeen year old who murdered her mother in Michigan. According to court documents Delilah Evans would stab her mother over a hundred times causing her death. On the same day, December 25 2016, Delilah Evans would also stab her brother in the hand. This teen killer was sentenced to life in prison without parole
A Clinton Township teenager is now heading to prison for the rest of her life – without the chance of parole — after being found guilty but mentally ill in the stabbing death of her mother on Christmas day of 2016.
Delilah Evans is 18 now. She was 17 at the time of the attack on her mom — 45-year-old Sonia Riang.
Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Richard Caretti didn’t mince words when issuing his sentence Thursday shortly before noon.
“I can’t imagine how you could plunge a knife 120 times into your mother who raised and nurtured you. Even considering your severe mental health issue, this senseless crime is mind-boggling,” said Hon. Richard Caretti.
Despite pleas from her attorney for a lesser sentence because of her mental illness and being a minor, the judge threw the book at her.
Evans walked into the courtroom biting her lip.
Her attorney brought forth an expert to talk about her mental state after she killed her mom more than a year ago.
“She was hearing voices. She was responding to internal stimuli. She was seeing shadows. She was in bad shape psychologically,” said Dr. Steven Miller, Consulting Forensic Examiner and licensed psychologist.
Dr. Miller told the court he upgraded her diagnosis to schizoaffective disorder – a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
He reminded the judge that he had testified during the trial that she should not be found guilty because of reason of insanity.
On December 25, 2016, Evans stabbed her brother in the hand before stabbing her mother to death.
It happened in their Clinton township apartment.
Riang was disabled and used a wheelchair to get around.
Even after Evans was arrested and charged with first degree premeditated murder, her siblings and aunt came to her defense.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get her any of the help she needed before the incident,” said her sister Roseanna Evans after the arrest.
“Obviously, she has a mental illness. She’s young. She can’t comprehend. I wouldn’t even be able to comprehend if I was a 17-year-old in this situation that I’m in right now,” added Roseanna.
“She doesn’t understand anything!” cried her aunt Kenitha Molden.
The jury rejected an insanity plea on February 22 of 2018. The panel instead found Evans guilty but mentally ill.
In court today for sentencing, Evans watched with little-to-no emotion — squinting at times, shifting in her seat — as the forensic examiner explained how putting her in the prison system would make treatment for her much more difficult.
Her attorney asked for a minimum of 25-to-60 years in prison because she was a minor when she killed her mom and mentally ill.
“I said, ‘Are you sorry that this happened as to what happened?’ and she said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Will you tell the judge that you are sorry as to what happened?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ And then I said, ‘Okay, what will you tell the judge?’ And she blanked out. So, judge, I hope you will not hold it against her if she is not going to be able to speak.”
Fourteen year old Shirley Wolf and fifteen year old Cindy Collier had just met the day before the murder that shook a community. According to court documents the two teenage girls decided the best way to get out of their town was to steal a car and the best way to steal a car was to murder its owner.
The two girls walked to a condo and began knocking on doors. When an elderly woman opened the door and let the two girls in they brutally attacked the woman stabbing her over twenty five times before taking her keys and attempting to steal her vehicle. Shirley Wolf wrote in her diary that night “Cindy and I ran away and killed a old lady. It was lots of fun”.
The two girls would be arrested soon after and both would be convicted of first degree murder however the two teen killers were sentenced as juveniles and Shirley Wolf would be released from custody in 1995 and Cindy Collier three years prior.
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The juvenile scrawl in the lined ledger that 14-year-old Shirley Wolf used as her diary is barely legible. But there is a chilling clarity in the entry dated Tuesday, June 14: “Today, Cindy and I ran away and killed an old lady. It was lots of fun.” It is doubtful that Wolf and her accomplice, Cindy Collier, 15, even knew their victim’s name. That afternoon, amazingly only a few hours after Wolf and Collier had met for the first time, they randomly knocked on doors in a condominium development in Auburn, Calif., 33 miles northeast of Sacramento.
Though the girls used the innocent ruses of asking for directions, a glass of water or to use the phone, their demeanor was unsettling enough to alarm the senior citizens they encountered. Two women locked their doors and windows when they saw them. Joe Becker, 70, allowed them inside. “But after they left, my wife felt so contaminated by them that she immediately washed the glass and scrubbed the phone with alcohol—before we knew anything about the murder.” Anna Brackett, 85, kindly invited them into her neatly kept, two-bedroom condo and spent nearly an hour chatting with them. “We decided we were going to kill her when we saw her,” says Shirley Wolf. “She was just an old lady. Just a perfect setup. We killed her because we wanted her car and we didn’t want to get caught.”
A retired seamstress who had altered draperies for Sears, Mrs. Brackett had great-grandchildren their age and was “very unsuspecting, a helpful person who would certainly give girls some water,” observes her son, Carl Brackett. “She was active and had all her marbles. She wasn’t senile.” When Mrs. Brackett received a call informing her that her son would drive her to a bingo game, the girls decided to act.
Shirley Wolf grabbed Mrs. Brackett by the throat and threw her to the floor, while Collier got a butcher knife from the kitchen and tossed it to Wolf. “Then I stabbed and stabbed,” recalls Wolf. “I stabbed her in the neck because if she lived, she would know who we are and report us. The lady was freaking me out, telling me to stop, that she was dying, I said: ‘Good.’ All of a sudden, blood came out of her mouth so I knew she was dead.” Before leaving, Collier ransacked the condo for money and keys to the 1970 Dodge parked in the garage and then ripped the two telephones from the wall. The keys they had taken wouldn’t start the car. So they fled on foot to nearby Highway 49.
As Carl Brackett, 52, passed them en route to his mother’s home, he said to his wife: “They’re stupid. Two young girls like that hitchhiking. Or else they’re tough.” When he discovered his mother’s body with 28 stab wounds only minutes later, Carl suspected that a deranged patient from a nearby mental hospital might have done it. “There’s a scene in the movie Psycho equivalent to what happened to my mother,” he explains. “I never could have imagined that two teenage girls could have done it.” Nor could the Placer County sheriff’s deputies.
Within an hour, 11 people offered descriptions of the two girls. Though several neighbors who remembered Collier from when she lived with her grandparents in the same development supplied investigators with her name, the deputies remained skeptical. By 2:30 a.m., however, they decided to conduct a routine search of Collier’s home to eliminate her as a suspect, if nothing else. “When I saw them laying there sleeping, I thought, ‘These can’t possibly be the people responsible for the murder,’ ” recalls Deputy George Coelho. “But you go through the motions just to make sure.”
When awakened, Collier, who had been released from Juvenile Hall only the day before, remained calm and silent. Wolf, however, confessed within minutes. After tape-recording Wolf’s confession, deputies then confronted Collier. “She started to laugh,” says Coelho. Then she recorded her own confession. “To honestly tell you the truth, we didn’t feel any badness,” said Collier. “Then after we did it, we wanted to do another one. We just wanted to kill someone. Just for fun.” In her own confession, Shirley Wolf also admitted elation: “We both felt excited. I had done something I had never done before.” The pointless brutality of the slaying and odd lack of remorse was shocking. But even more unusual, according to juvenile-welfare professionals, is that two young girls were even capable of such a violent, physically intimate form of murder as stabbing.
Generally speaking, females tend to turn destructive impulses on themselves, while males lash out at others. Thomas Condit, Wolf’s court-appointed attorney, entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity after receiving a psychiatric evaluation of his client. “I’d like to say that Shirley felt sorry,” says Condit. “But I can’t. That’s part of her problem. She told me that while she was killing the old lady, she was thinking of everybody she hated—her father and his mother. But the psychiatrist believes it was a symbolic killing of her own mother.”
Tried as juveniles under state law, both Collier and Shirley Wolf were found guilty of first-degree murder on July 29, and Collier was sentenced to the maximum for minors—incarceration in a California Youth Authority facility until she turns 27. In Wolf’s case, the insanity issue will be heard as a separate phase of the trial. “We’ve got a judicial system that does not work,” says Carl Brackett. “I’m thoroughly disgusted.” Next month, when the proceedings resume, lawyers and psychiatrists will explore the troubling questions which remain: How did two young girls become monstrous, convicted killers? What furious impulses drove them to murder an innocent old woman who offered them only kindness?
Anna Brackett’s killing was a nightmare within the nightmare of Shirley Wolf’s life. Sexually abused from infancy by her father—and occasionally by her paternal grandfather and uncle as well—Shirley’s disruptive behavior drew the attention of an alert teacher as early as kindergarten. But the teacher’s recommendation of psychiatric help was ignored and Shirley ran away for the first time when she was 6. But the mean streets of Brooklyn, where she was born, seemed even more terrifying than staying at home, and she returned within the day. “It was really rough in Brooklyn,” Shirley says. “A lot of people, even kindergartners, carry knives.”
That same year her carpenter father, Louis James Wolf, now 39, had a disabling accident that has since prevented him from working. “Then he stayed home all the time,” says Shirley Wolf. “At first he didn’t want us helping him but then he took advantage of everybody. He thinks he’s real big and cool and he just has to snap his fingers and we’ll all jump to him.” In 1976 the family moved to Placerville, Calif.—28 miles from Auburn—because the senior Wolf had lived there with his first wife and their two sons and a daughter. According to court records, when Shirley Wolf was 9, her father sent her mother, Katherine, 33, on an errand one morning and locked her three younger brothers out of the house. Then he raped Shirley in the bathroom. “I was really scared,” recalls Shirley. “I was really frightened to lose my virginity, plus my honor and my pride. That’s something I don’t forgive my dad for.”
For the next five years her father sexually assaulted her whenever an opportunity arose—sometimes three times a day—and obtained birth control pills for her when she reached puberty. Finally, last October, Shirley Wolf blurted out the truth to her mother—who admitted having suspected it ever since she found her husband abusing Shirley when the child was only 3. Shirley Wolf maintained silence all those years, she says, because she feared her father’s violent temper and didn’t want to be blamed for breaking up the family. “My dad asked me not to tell my mother and I was afraid I’d hurt her,” says Shirley. “My dad said, ‘If you love me, you won’t do that.’ ”
Though he denied the allegations of his wife and child, Wolf pleaded guilty to reduced charges of child molestation and served only 100 days in county jail. “They told me if I pleaded innocent, guaranteed I would get from one to 50 years,” claims Wolf. “I’d rather serve a couple of months than risk 50 years. I’d rather be with my family.” In a skewed version of justice, Shirley, as she had feared, was removed from her family in January because the terms of her father’s probation as a registered sex offender forbid contact with his daughter. While Wolf was reunited with his wife and sons, Shirley Wolf was placed in two foster homes, where she “felt like a stranger,” and finally was sent to a Sacramento group home in May.
She repeatedly ran away, begged to go home and began fighting in school. “You get to the point where you’re pushed in a corner and I just came back fighting,” she explains. “I want to go home. I forgive my father and I try to forget it. He’s apologized to me, my family and to God.” But when she’s alone in her cell, her feet in chains (she had threatened to attack her keepers) and reading the romance novels she loves, her past returns to haunt her. “I think of my dad and it hurts,” Shirley Wolf says. “I’ll just feel pain and I’ll have to cry to get it out. I can’t really pinpoint where it’s from. God knows, I’ll get hurt and just cry.”
Cindy Collier’s fierce brown eyes radiate hostility and a barely suppressed rage that has exploded often enough to have earned her a reputation as “assaultive” among wary Juvenile Hall staffers who have known her since she was 12. Her arrest history includes charges of burglary, theft, assault and drug use. She was, in fact, so familiar with the arrest process that when she was charged with murder she recited the Miranda warning before the deputy could read it. Collier was frequently spared incarceration and was sentenced instead to county supervised-work projects, such as picking up litter on highways, but the court’s leniency went unappreciated. “I was on the work project with her,” reports Mike Fluty, 17. “But she couldn’t play it straight. She was a smart-ass to everyone. Even towards guys.”
As a student in Auburn’s Chana High, Collier was given a wide berth. “Cindy was one of those girls that nobody would mess with,” says David Silva, 17, who shared two classes with her. “If she didn’t like somebody, she’d yell at them and push them around.” At 5’9″ and nearing 140 pounds, Collier backed up her verbal threats with a menacing physical presence. “I remember a fight down my street last year when she ripped this girl’s blouse off,” says Terri, 16, a former neighbor. When Collier visited a friend in the Sacramento group home, she met Wolf. They apparently discovered in each other a kindred spirit. “Shirley’s exactly like me,” says Cindy. “She has the same childhood.”
When Cindy was 1, her parents divorced. Her mother, Betty Avery, remarried. But that marriage also ended in divorce and the mother supported her daughter and three sons by working as a waitress. Cindy’s father, David Lee Collier, resurfaced after 14 years when his daughter’s role in Anna Brackett’s murder was publicized. He began visiting her in Juvenile Hall and attending the court hearing. But he left town before the trial. Cindy’s mother stayed away from the courtroom. “Whenever the subject comes up, her mother starts to cry and then Cindy starts to cry,” explains April Maynard, Collier’s public defender. “Cindy didn’t think her mother could handle it.” In her statement to police the night of her arrest, Cindy revealed that she once had been raped by a family member, as well as by another man who then threw her down a flight of concrete stairs in Tahoe. “My childhood has been rotten. I’ve been beaten since I was born and I’ve been raped a few times,” Collier says. “I have tried to kill myself before and all it did was bring frustrations. So I take it out on others. I don’t like them because they probably think they’re better than I am. I don’t want them around. I want them to pay.” Collier told authorities that she so deeply resented anyone who appeared to have a normal, decent life that she would attack them. “I’ve hurt people, I’ve stabbed people, I’ve shot people,” brags Collier, though police doubt that the latter is true. “I’ve thrown people off the Auburn Dam.” When asked if she had ever killed anyone before, Collier replied: “No. But I’ve tried so many times.”
According to her interrogators, that was the only note of regret in Collier’s confession. It was the cruelest of crimes, an unprovoked and brutal slaying of a helpless victim selected at random, with only the slimmest chance of escape. It was simply the senseless act of two young girls whose savagery was deeply rooted in their own tormented childhoods. “Shirley really can’t understand the difference between right and wrong,” says Thomas Condit. “How do you appreciate right and wrong when you have a father telling you it’s wrong not to stay home and service him when you should be in school?”
Both defense attorneys believe the girls’ pent-up rage at an adult world that never protected them from harm was finally vented on another as helpless as themselves. “I think it was an unfortunate chemistry between the two girls,” says Condit. “I think it also had to do with finding a new friend and wanting to show that she was capable of doing anything that the friend was.” It is sadly ironic that the bond between Shirley Wolf and Collier, once so immediate and volatile, has disintegrated during their incarceration. Now, bitter enemies, each has to face the future alone again.
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Anna Brackett, 85, opened her door on June 14, 1983, and saw two teenage girls. They told her that strange men were following them and they asked to come inside to use the phone.
What happened next was recorded later in the diary of one of them.
“Today Cindy and I ran away and killed an old lady,” Shirley Katherine Wolf, 14, scrawled in a ledger containing her most private thoughts. “It was lots of fun.”
Brackett, a retired seamstress and great-grandmother, had been waiting for a visit from her son, Carl, at around 6 p.m. As he was driving toward his mother’s Auburn, Calif., condo, Carl took passing notice of two teenage girls hitchhiking on the road.
He’d learn later that the hitchhikers — Wolf and her new best friend, Cindy Lee Collier, 15 — had just murdered his mom.
Carl found his mother’s body on the living room floor. Along with at least 28 stab wounds — one 4 inches deep — an autopsy would later show signs that she had been beaten and strangled.
Police scouring the neighborhood discovered that two teens had knocked on other doors in the community that day. Some residents listened to the girls’ tale of woe and made the lifesaving decision to keep the door locked.
One woman let them in and gave them water and access to the phone. But the girls left quickly when the woman’s husband entered the room.
She later told police that her visitors were so creepy that she washed the water glasses and wiped the phone receiver with alcohol as soon as they were out the door.
She may have destroyed some clues, but it was still not hard for police to track down Brackett’s killers. Several neighbors had seen the girls, close up or fleeing the scene, and offered detailed descriptions.
They were locals — Collier from Auburn and Wolf from Placerville, 28 miles away — and witnesses soon matched faces to names.
Less than 12 hours after Brackett’s murder, detectives were knocking on the door of the Auburn home where Collier lived with her mother and brother. The pair were sleeping in the basement when police woke them up for questioning.
Wolf quickly told all.
“We did it. We killed her,” she flatly declared.
She said they were scouring Brackett’s neighborhood for a car in which they could run away. Brackett’s 1970 Dodge caught their eye.
“Saw she was an old lady. Perfect car,” Wolf said. “Just a setup. We figured we’d kill her.”
Brackett let them in, offered them cold drinks, and chatted with them for over an hour before the girls got down to business.
“Then I stabbed and stabbed. I stabbed her in the neck because if she lived, she would know who we are and report us,” Wolf said.
Brackett begged her to stop and said that she was dying.
“And I turned, and I go, ‘Good,’ ” she said.
Both girls appeared to revel in the cold-blooded murder of a kind, helpless old lady.
“We were going out — to celebrate . . . the fact that we killed someone. . . . Just for fun,” Collier said.
They seemed like sisters, or at least old friends, but in reality, they had met just eight hours earlier, kindred spirits who hit it off immediately. They shared a blazing rage, fueled by rotten childhoods, wrote Joan Merriam in “Little Girl Lost.”
Collier was just about a year old when her father skipped out. Before age 7, she said, she’d been beaten and raped by her stepbrother and other men her mother brought home.
By the time she reached high school, she had a record of crimes — including theft and assault — a nasty temper, and a chip on her shoulder. She imagined that everyone had a better life than she did.
“I don’t want them around,” she said. “I want them to pay.”
Born in Brooklyn, Wolf grew up in family marred by alcoholism and violence. Wolf said her father started abusing her before she entered kindergarten.
After her family moved to California in 1978, she said her father raped her. She was 9. The abuse went on for years.
He was eventually arrested, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor child molestation charge on the day before Christmas 1982, and spent 100 days in jail.
After that, Wolf bounced around from foster homes to a group home, where, on June 14, she met Collier, a runaway from a work program.
In July 1983, Brackett’s baby-faced killers were found guilty of first-degree murder and burglary. It was a nonjury trial, and the judge took 15 minutes to make his decision.
Wolf’s lawyer argued that his client was insane, blinded by a “rage she felt from a lifetime of abuse,” UPI reported.
Three days of listening to psychiatrists convinced the judge that Wolf was a “cold-blooded killer” and sane at the time of the murder. Collier and Wolf received the same sentence: eight years in a juvenile detention facility. Both had time added for bad behavior.
After studying law in prison, Collier was released in 1992. She married, had four children, and has lived quietly ever since.
Released in 1995, Wolf continued to have trouble with the law for a time and then dropped out of sight.
Recently, Merriam told “The Justice Story” that Wolf contacted her, and told her she is living a “quiet, solitary life” in the Midwest and working to help victims of child abuse overcome their demons.
Kayla Dixon was sixteen years old when she shot a man during a robbery in Georgia. According to court documents Kayla Dixon and her boyfriend 20 year old Nathaniel Vivien met the victim through a Craiglist ad where he was selling a Playstation 4. When the victim refused to hand over the video game system Kayla Dixon would grab a gun she had hidden and fatally shot the man. The teen killer and her boyfriend were soon arrested and ultimately she would plead guilty and be sentenced to forty years in prison
Kayla Dixon 2023 Information
MAJOR OFFENSE: VOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER MOST RECENT INSTITUTION: ARRENDALE STATE PRISON MAX POSSIBLE RELEASE DATE: 09/11/2054
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A Doraville teen will spend 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to killing a man during the Craigslist sale of his video gaming system.
Kayla Dixon, now 18, took the plea on the same day her trial was to begin.
Prosecutors say Dixon and her boyfriend, Nathaniel Vivien, responded to a Craigslist ad posted by Danny Zeitz in September 2014, intending to rob him. When Zeitz resisted, Dixon admits she took a gun out from between her legs and fired off a fatal shot.
“I would trade anything, almost anything, to bring Daniel back. But I know I can’t,” Dixon said through tears in a prepared statement. “I know he had plans. I wish I could tell him I’m so, so sorry that this happened, but I can’t.”
Dixon’s attorney told Judge Wendy Shoob her client had a rough childhood, that included rape and several failed relationships with men who were involved in criminal activity.
“Nothing, in any way, excuses what happened, but this is, in some way, an explanation of how things led to being where they were,” said Leah Abbasi.
Dixon asked Zeitz’s family to forgive her.
“I want Daniel’s family to know that I regret that day. I’m so sorry. I ask that God heals the hearts of Daniel’s loved ones,” she said. “I know I’m facing a long time away and I hope one day my apology will matter.”
Shoob said what happened was tragic for everyone involved and accepted the negotiated plea deal.
Beforehand, Zeitz’s mother, Patty, spoke of the grief her family has endured.
“Each day we wake, even a year and nine months, with the shocking realization that life as we knew it with our son, brother and friend will no longer exist,” she said. “The loss of Danny has reached the depths of our hearts, souls and the hearts and souls of thousands around the world of his gifts of kindness and joy.”
Zeitz, a semi-professional gamer, had fans around the world and was the subject of a documentary entitled “Level Up” after his murder.
After the hearing, Zeitz told Petchenik her family accepts Dixon’s apology, but says it will be a long time before they can forgive her.
“At first I didn’t want to accept her apology. I thought her apology today was very heartfelt and I feel like she is truly sorry for what happened,” she told Petchenik. “It’s just a crime that young people can get caught in these situations because of the examples they’d had in their lives.”
Zeitz’s father, John, told Petchenik he hopes Dixon can be rehabilitated in prison.
“I hope it stays with her and she becomes a better person and able to contribute when she finally does get out,” he said.
Dixon’s co-defendant, Nathaniel Vivien, still faces a trial later this summer. Dixon’s attorney told the judge she is willing to testify against him if asked.
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Kayla Dixon is currently incarcerated at the Arrendale State Prison
Regina and Margaret DeFrancisco are two teens from Illinois who were charged in the murder of Regina boyfriend Oscar Velazquez. According to court documents Regina and Margaret DeFrancisco lured the victim to their home and then shot the man before wrapping up his body and setting him on fire. The two teen girls would be initially questioned by the police but before they could be arrested they would flee the area and be on the run for the next two years. Margaret DeFrancisco would be arrested in March 2002 and Margaret DeFrancisco was arrested in October 2002.
The two teen killers would be convicted and Regina DeFrancisco was sentenced to 35 years in prison and Margaret DeFrancisco was sentenced to 46 years in prison.
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R77247 – DEFRANCISCO, MARGARET
Parent Institution:
LOGAN CORRECTIONAL CENTER
Offender Status:
IN CUSTODY
Location:
LOGAN
Regina DeFrancisco 2023 Information
R76804 – DEFRANCISCO, REGINA
Parent Institution:
LOGAN CORRECTIONAL CENTER
Offender Status:
IN CUSTODY
Location:
LOGAN
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A childhood friend took the stand Tuesday in the murder trial of Margaret DeFrancisco, the 20-year-old Chicago woman on trial for the slaying of her sister’s boyfriend.
Veronica Garcia testified DeFrancisco asked her for the gun that killed Oscar Velazquez four years ago.
“I said probably, and she said, ‘Come to my house,’” Garcia said.
Garcia, who was charged with helping to cover up the slaying, also said killing Velazquez was never part of the plan that DeFrancisco and her sister, Regina, devised. According to Garcia, the two sisters just wanted “to scare Oscar for his money.”
The DeFrancisco sisters were charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery. Regina, 21, was found guilty by a jury in July and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Margaret’s trial ended with a hung jury. Her new trial began Monday.
Garcia, a key witness in Margaret DeFrancisco’s earlier trial, offered similar testimony Tuesday.
Prosecutors allege the DeFrancisco sisters lured Velazquez to their Pilsen neighborhood home on the afternoon of June 6, 2000, with the intention of robbing him of his money and car.
On Tuesday, the new jury listened to more than two hours of testimony from Garcia, who struck a deal with prosecutors to testify against her childhood friend in exchange for a five-year prison sentence.
Garcia then detailed the events of June 6 for jurors. She said she and her boyfriend delivered the gun to Margaret DeFrancisco’s house, and she stayed there.
“(The sisters) were talking to each other about where they were going to rob him,” Garcia told the jury.
When Velazquez arrived, Garcia said, Regina DeFrancisco called him to the basement. She said Margaret DeFrancisco followed him, closely holding the gun behind her back.
“Maybe 20 to 30 seconds (later), I heard a gunshot,” Garcia said. “I got up and ran downstairs.”
She said she saw Velazquez lying face down on the floor with blood coming out of his ear, and his right hand was shaking. Garcia said she also saw the two sisters going through his pockets, and they found a gun in Velazquez’s waistband.
“The whole time I was asking them, screaming at them, ‘Why did you do it?’” Garcia said.
She said the sisters wrapped Velazquez’s body in flowery sheets, and she helped them drag it outside into the trunk of Velazquez’s car. Prosecutors say the DeFrancisco sisters set the body on fire using nail polish remover.
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Regina Defrancisco is currently incarcerated at the Logan Correctional Center
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Margaret DeFrancisco is currently incarcerated at the Logan Correctional Center
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Regina DeFrancisco current release date is 2038
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Margaret DeFrancisco current release date is 2048
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In April 2000, Oscar Velazquez, a 22-year-old hard-working Chicago truck driver gave 17-year-old Regina DeFrancisco a ride home.
Two months later, she and her sister repaid that favor by shooting him in the back of the head and burning his remains before evading police capture for two years.
On June 6, 2000, the incinerated body of an unidentified Hispanic male was found on the south side of Chicago. Detectives had scant evidence to go on, according to “Killer Siblings,” airing Saturdays at 6/5c on Oxygen.
The victim had been wrapped in a bed sheet with blood on it. Nail polish remover, a possible accelerant, was found nearby.
As authorities sought to identify the victim, they looked for a motive. Gang violence? Robbery? A jealous lover? As they worked their way from ground zero, they confirmed that the cause of death was a bullet to the back of the head
On June 8, about 36 hours after the discovery of the crime, the victim was identified by his mother as Oscar Velazquez. He’d never been arrested and had no gang affiliations. He was a “good, clean-cut kid,” investigators told “Killer Siblings.”
As detectives dug into the case, their focus turned to Velazquez’s car, a white Camaro, which had gone missing. Witnesses told investigators that the vehicle was seen being driven by two girls.
When the car was eventually recovered, it was gutted and torched “beyond evidentiary value.” There were no telltale fingerprints or evidence to help further detectives’ work in the murder case.
“Whoever did the homicide was trying to cover their tracks … by burning the body and then the car,” Steven Konow, a detective with the Chicago Police Department, told “Killer Siblings.”
However, Velazquez’s phone records provided detectives an invaluable clue, as they looked into conversations he had in the hours preceding his murder.
The logs turned up the name of Regina DeFrancisco, a 17-year-old who lived with her 16-year-old sister, Margaret, and single mother, Nora, in the Lower West Side community of Pilsen, the Chicago Tribune reported in 2004.
Regina had a reputation for being magnetic and charming, according to “Killer Siblings.” Her little sister looked up to her and emulated her. So when Regina started to dabble in questionable behavior, including hanging out with gang member Johnny Rivera, Margaret followed her lead. The girls began to go off the rails.
Caught by narcotics officers in Rivera’s apartment where there was two kilos of cocaine, Regina had been hit with a drug arrest. After a court appearance linked to the bust, she was outside court room and by chance, Velazquez drove past at that time. She asked him for a ride home, and he obliged, according to “Killer Siblings.” The two began dating.
Authorities made a beeline to speak with Regina and Margaret about the Velazquez homicide, Konow told producers, and they found the girls at home.
There, the sisters corroborated each other’s accounts, which were intended to clear the girls from suspicion.
During her interview Regina emphasized her innocence and told investigators that they ought to be looking at Rivera.
But detectives questioned why Regina was pointing the finger at someone else. Rivera was eventually cleared of suspicion, and the 17-year-old girl’s strategy, meant to deflect blame from her, backfired and intensified it.
Investigators focused on Regina and considered the likelihood of Margaret’s involvement.
A week after the slaying, Frank Main, a journalist with the Chicago Sun-Times, told producers that officials had enough evidence to get a warrant to search the DeFrancisco home.
As authorities combed through the residence, various red flags emerged. Sheets in the house matched the pattern of the one in which Velazquez’s body had been wrapped. In the basement, Luminol revealed significant traces of blood that had been cleaned up, Al Graf, detective with the Chicago Police Department, told producers. A bullet casing, a match to the same kind of pistol cartridge used to kill Velazquez, was also found.
But a witness had previously came forward and reported seeing three people loading a heavy object into Velazquez’s trunk. This was the missing piece that remained: Who was the third party spotted on the night of the murder near Velazquez’s car?
The answer soon emerged: the sisters’ friend, Veronica Garcia, 15. On June 22, she was brought in for questioning When asked about events on the night of the homicide, she clammed up and turned evasive.
Authorities told her that she could be charged with murder, and Garcia then detailed what had happened before the murder and during it.
The DeFrancisco sisters had duped Velazquez into believing Regina needed $1,000 for bail money. He gave it to her, and when he asked to get his money back they lured him to their house with the promise of repayment.
The sisters had gotten their hands on a gun with Garcia’s help, and Margaret shot Velazquez as he descended the stairs to the basement, where they’d spread plastic to help hide the crime.
The trio wrapped his body up in sheets, dumped him into the trunk of his Camaro, and drove him to a vacant lot, where they set him ablaze after dousing his body with nail polish remover.
By the time investigators had confirmed that the blood in the DeFrancisco basement belonged to Velazquez, the sisters had fled. In July 2000, U.S. Marshals joined the hunt for the suspect sisters. After months passed, authorities enlisted the help of “America’s Most Wanted” to spread the word about the fugitive family members.
The airing yielded no successful leads, and the case went cold. In March 2002, though, the episode re-aired and officials got a break. Margaret was found in Roscoe, Illinois, and brought back to Chicago to face formal charges.
Seven months later, Regina was finally tracked down in Dallas, after an incident involving a stolen car.
Both sisters were charged with premeditated murder. In July 2004, they were tried together before two separate juries. Regina DeFrancisco’s verdict came back first. She was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to 35 years in prison.
A day later, a jury was unable to reach a verdict in the case of Margaret DeFrancisco. She “walked out of a Cook County courtroom free on bail,” reported the Chicago Tribune at the time.
She was retried and convicted in December 2004 and sentenced to 46 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections.
For her role in concealing the crime, Garcia was sentenced to 5 years in prison.
The DeFrancisco siblings have each filed unsuccessful appeals.
Maricela Diaz was fifteen years old when she helped murder another teenage girl in South Dakota. According to court documents Maricela Diaz and Alexander Salgado would lure the victim to a remote location where the sixteen year old victim was stabbed repeatedly, placed inside of a vehicle and set on fire. Maricela Diaz would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to eighty years in prison. This teen killer has appealed her sentence
Marciela Diaz 2023 Information
Age 28
Race Hispanic or Latino
Gender Female
Hair Color Brown
Eye Color Brown
Height 4′ 11″
Weight 115 lbs.
Location South Dakota Women’s Prison
Maricela Diaz Other News
Maricela Diaz was barely a teenager when she helped murder another teenage girl. Now, that decision could cost her 80 years of her life.
In January, a jury found Maricela Diaz guilty on all charges relating to the 2009 death of a Jasmine Guevara. Friday, a judge sentenced Diaz to 80 years in prison for first degree murder and 50 years for aggravated assault, which will be served concurrently.
The sentencing in Alexandria took most of the day, where prosecutors held up a picture of Guevara, then a picture of her burned body after her death. A short time later, 20-year-year-old Maricela Diaz learned her fate.
“I will be sad for the rest of my life,” said Guevara’s mother Ada Morales.
Nearly five and a half years after the 16-year-old’s death, her mother and sister spoke about the things Jasmine will never experience.
“I wanted her to see the life, the beautiful life that she took away,” said Jasmine’s sister Ada Guevara.
Guevara says no words can describe the hurt, pain and trauma her family has endured. She described her younger sister as the first person to lend a hand, just as she did to Alexander Salgado and Diaz when they first arrived in Mitchell.
Guevara said, “This is it. This was our last chance. This is all we get. I was just trying to express. I had just been trying to express what had been piling up for the last five years.”
On Nov. 10, 2009, Maricela Diaz, who was 15 at the time, and Salgado, lured Jasmine to a remote site near Mitchell. She was stabbed and left for dead in the trunk of a burning car. Before Diaz was sentenced, she told the victim’s family she hopes they will be able to forgive her for her role in Jasmine’s death.
In one of the rare moments that we’ve seen her cry, she said, “I ask you, your honor, please have mercy on me.”
“It’s truly hard to say what Maricela Diaz feels or what she thinks. Only she can say those things,” said Guevara.
While the judge recognized that Maricela Diaz has now been incarcerated for a fourth of her life and has since gotten her GED, the judge said her crime crossed the bounds of all human decency. For that, she will serve at least 40 years behind bars.
Morales said, “I don’t know if any sentence will be enough, but I don’t know about for everybody, but it’s fair enough.”
The defense said Maricela Diaz wanted the chance to raise her young daughter. They asked that she be sentenced to 15 years in prison. The judge says he set the price for taking Jamine’s life very, very high.
Salgado pleaded guilty to 2nd-degree murder in august of 2010, after accepting a plea deal. He is now serving a life sentence.
Maricela Diaz More News
A 16-year-old girl accused of murdering a fellow 16-year-old Mitchell girl two years ago made her first appearance in adult court Wednesday.
Maricela Diaz, 16, of Fort Wayne, Ind., and Guanajuato, Mexico, appeared in court in Alexandria and was charged with first-degree murder, felony murder by arson, first degree arson, felony murder committed during kidnapping and second-degree aggravated kidnapping
If convicted on the most severe charges, she would face a mandatory sentence of life in prison. According to the South Dakota Attorney General’s Office, states cannot seek the death penalty for an offender who was younger than 18 at the time the crime was committed.
The charges stem from the murder of Jasmine Guevara, 16, of Mitchell, on Nov. 10, 2009. Diaz and Alexander Salgado, 21, were arrested for the murder. Until Wednesday, Diaz’s identity was concealed by authorities because of her juvenile status, and she was known to the public only as “M.D.”
South Dakota law says the courts may use a number of factors to weigh whether a child should be tried in adult court, including the seriousness of an alleged felony offense and whether the alleged felony was committed in an “aggressive, violent, premeditated or willful manner.”
No juvenile prosecuted for a crime may stay within the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections beyond age 21, according to state law, which may have been a reason for transferring Diaz to adult court.
Court documents state both Diaz and Salgado admitted during police interviews that they killed Guevara. Salgado, who has a child with Diaz, pleaded guilty in 2010 to second-degree murder as part of a plea agreement with the state. He was sentenced to life in prison and is currently serving his sentence at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. Diaz is being held in the Minnehaha County juvenile detention center.
Guevara was lured to a rural Hanson County house under false pretenses, stabbed and burned alive in the trunk of her car. Salgado told authorities that Diaz was fueled by jealousy of Guevara.
Court documents state Guevara, Salgado and Diaz attended a party on Nov. 8, 2009. Witnesses at the party said Diaz became jealous because of a suspected relationship between Guevara and Salgado.
“Diaz indicated that she wanted to fight with Jasmine, but no such fight ensued that evening,” according to court documents.
” ‘I’m gonna kill you and I’m gonna kill the girl,’ ” Salgado quoted Diaz as saying.
Diaz and Salgado had been staying with an acquaintance at a residence approximately one block from where Guevara resided, according to court documents. Both residences are near the corner of First and Minnesota in Mitchell.
Court documents state Diaz and Salgado told Guevara to pick them up to attend a cookout.
“When Guevara picked Salgado and Diaz up at their residence, Salgado and Diaz had secured and hidden a knife for each of them,” court documents state.
According to a portion of court records read aloud during Salgado’s sentencing by his attorney, Mike Fink, of Bridgewater, Salgado admitted that he drove with Diaz and Guevara in Guevara’s car to the “Haunt House,” an unoccupied building in rural Hanson County. After leaving the car on Diaz’s instruction, Salgado returned to the sound of screaming and found Diaz repeatedly stabbing Guevara in the legs and stomach with such force that the blade of the knife bent.
Court documents state Salgado returned to the car to find the doors locked. He gained entrance into the vehicle, sat behind Guevara, who was in the driver’s seat, and stabbed Guevara “a number of times.”
“At some point during the attack, Guevara was able to open the driver’s side door in an attempt to escape,” according to court documents. “However, Salgado grabbed Guevara by the hair in order to restrain her and keep her from escaping.”
The knife stayed in Guevara’s neck as the two put her body in the trunk, drove the car into some trees and ignited the car with lighter fluid Guevara had purchased earlier that evening under the belief that it was for a cookout.
The fire was determined to be the cause of Guevara’s death.
Court documents state a search of the residence where Diaz and Salgado were staying revealed clothing soiled with Guevara’s blood. Guevara’s phone was recovered in an area provided by Salgado and Diaz.
Even after Salgado confessed to Guevara’s murder, he still referred to Diaz as “sweetie” and “my love,” according to court documents.
“I love you a lot,” Salgado told Maricela Diaz in Spanish after his first police interview. “Everything I did was for love.”
Until Wednesday, the status of the girl known as “M.D.” was secret. The South Dakota Attorney General’s Office remained quiet on any details surrounding Diaz, citing a policy that prohibits the office from commenting on juvenile matters.
Court documents state a motion to transfer Maricela Diaz to adult court was heard between Jan. 31 and Feb. 4. She was officially transferred to adult court Wednesday by Judge Sean O’Brien.
A representative from Hanson County State’s Attorney Jim Davies’ office said Davies is not taking any questions on the case. Sara Rabern, spokeswoman for the South Dakota Attorney General’s Office, said Doug Dailey and Chris Nipe, both of Mitchell, have been appointed to represent Diaz.
First-degree murder, felony murder by arson and felony murder committed during kidnapping are all Class A felonies punishable by a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
Second-degree aggravated kidnapping is a Class 1 felony punishable by a maximum of 50 years in prison. Firstdegree arson is a Class 2 felony with a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.
Maricela Davis is currently incarcerated at the South Dakota Women’s Prison
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