Sierra Neihaus was fifteen years old from Kansas who would stab to death her thirteen year old sister. According to court documents Sierra Neihaus would get into an argument with her younger sister that ended violently with the thirteen year old stabbed multiple times. This teen killer would be sentenced to 16 years in prison
A 16-year-old Kansas girl has been ordered to spend nearly 16 years in prison in connection with the stabbing death of her younger sister.
Sierra Neihaus was sentenced Tuesday in Saline County. That’s where she pleaded no contest in March to amended charges of second-degree murder, felony theft, and two counts of interference with law enforcement.
Prosecutors allege Niehaus fatally stabbed her 13-year-old sister, Galazia, at the family’s rural home on Aug. 1, 2014
A 15-year-old Kansas girl will go on trial in September for first-degree murder in the stabbing death of her sister.
Sierra Niehaus pleaded not guilty Monday to killing her sister, 13-year-old Galazia, at the family’s home in rural Saline County on Aug. 1. She is being tried as an adult.
The Salina Journal reports the trial was scheduled to begin Sept. 15 and is expected to take about a week.
Attorney Julie Effenbeck was appointed to represent Niehaus, who earlier this month was transferred from juvenile detention to Saline County’s adult inmate population.
Judge Patrick Thompson ruled in April that Niehaus should be tried as an adult. She was 14 when her sister was killed.
Carmen Collins was a seventeen teen killer from Georgia who would fatally shoot her younger sister. According to court documents Carmen Collins was packing up her stuff planning to runaway from home when her younger sister attempted to stop her. Carmen Collins would grab her fathers gun and chased her sister around the home shooting her several times. Carmen Collins would then set fire to the home in order to cover up the murder. Carmen Collins would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to life in prison
Carmen Collins 2023 Information
MAJOR OFFENSE: MURDER MOST RECENT INSTITUTION: ARRENDALE STATE PRISON MAX POSSIBLE RELEASE DATE: LIFE
Carmen Collins More News
A teenage girl from the small town of Kathleen, Ga., was sentenced to life in prison this weekend after she pleaded guilty to killing her 12-year-old sister and setting fire to her family’s house in hopes of covering up the crime.
Carmen Collins, now 18, initially denied she had killed her sister, but reportedly admitted her guilt to her attorney two weeks ago. She pleaded guilty to malice murder and arson for the July 2012 crimes, according to the Telegraph of Macon. Superior Court Judge Edward Lukemire sentenced her to life in prison. She will be eligible for parole in 30 years.
Prosecutors said the girls’ parents had left the house when India caught her sister packing her things to run away. India tried to stop Carmen from leaving and threatened to call their parents. Carmen then got her father’s .40-caliber handgun, chased her sister through the house and ultimately shot her six times. Five of the shots were in the back, while final shot was fired as Collins stood over her sister.
Then, according to the prosecutor, Carmen Collins retrieved two gas cans from a shed, poured the gasoline around the house and set it on fire with the intention of making it look like her sister had been killed in the blaze. She fled in a car with the family dog to Columbus, where she was arrested two days later.
“This situation is a no-win, unbearable situation for these parents,” Hartwig told the judge. “They have basically lost both of their daughters. Our thoughts and prayers go out to these parents. This is a horrible situation.”
The Telegraph reports that the girls’ mother, Angela Collins, wept through much of the hearing. Prior to the sentencing, she spoke to the judge and smiled at her daughter as she walked past the defense table. She said while Carmen had run away a couple of times she was respectful and had never been violent.
“Our girls were very close,” Collins said. “They loved each other. … We look forward to the day Carmen is back with us, and we still love her and always will. We will love her and support her through any and everything.”
Collins was also charged with felony murder, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, burglary and auto theft, but those charges were dropped with her guilty plea to murder and arson.
Anna Schroeder was fifteen years old when she shot and killed her mother in Illinois. According to court documents Anna Schroeder and her girlfriend Rachel Helm planned the murder of Peggy Schroeder so the two could be together. Anna Schroeder would fatally shoot her mother in the head. This teen killer would plead guilty to second degree murder and would be sentenced to twenty years in prison. Rachel Helm is waiting to go on trial for helping to clean up the murder scene
Anna Schroeder 2023 Information
Parent Institution:
LOGAN CORRECTIONAL CENTER
Offender Status:
IN CUSTODY
Location:
LOGAN
Anna Schroeder More News
Nineteen-year-old Anna Schroeder was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison more than four years after she fatally shot her mother in the head in their Morrison home.
“I’m the child who shot and killed her own mom,” a tearful Schroeder said from the witness stand in a Whiteside County Courtroom.
“That is how people know me, that is how people will always know me, and that is how I deserve to be known. My mom doesn’t deserve to be known as my victim. She deserved to be known as a great mom.”
Before handing down the sentence, Whiteside County Judge Trish Senneff said the case was one of the most “egregious and despicable” cases she can recall in her almost 37 years in law.
“The callous disregard for the life of Peggy Schroeder, the adoptive mother of the defendant, is disgusting,” she said.
Schroeder will receive credit for 1,581 already served in juvenile detention and the Whiteside County Jail. She also will get day-for-day credit and must serve one year of mandatory supervised release once she completes her sentence, Senneff ordered.
Schroeder, who was charged as an adult, pleaded guilty in January 2020 to second-degree murder in her mother’s death. In exchange for her plea, Whiteside County State’s Attorney Terry Costello dismissed two counts of first-degree murder and one count each of arson and concealment of a homicidal death.
She was 15 when prosecutors say she shot her mother in the head in their Morrison home on July 6, 2017. Leading up to the shooting, Schroeder and her girlfriend, then 15-year-old Rachel Helm, sent multiple text messages about killing Peggy Schroeder so that they could be together.
After killing her mother, Schroeder called Helm and sent her a picture of her mother’s body when the teen said she didn’t believe she had killed her. Later that night, Helm’s mother dropped her off at Schroeder’s house and the two tried cleaning up the crime scene and planned to run away.
Two days later, Helm set fire to linen on Schroeder’s bed and a sheet covering Peggy Schroeder’s body.
Anna Schroeder was later located at her father’s home in Walnut.
Helm, now 19, is awaiting trial on charges of arson and concealment of a homicidal death. The case is still pending.
Peggy Schroeder’s sister, Charlene Wilkinson, spoke in court about the shock she felt when she found out what happened.
“Why would Anna ever intentionally kill Peggy?” she said. “Peggy loved you so much. She gave you all her time when you needed her.”
Costello recommended the maximum sentence, pointing to the brutality of the crime and the need to send a message to the community.
“This case cries out for a 20-year sentence,” he said.
Defense attorney Jim Mertes argued for a 12-year sentence, citing her severe mental health challenges and the influence of Helm.
According to Mertes, she was a “perfectly horrible catalyst for a perfectly horrible storm.”
During her statement, Schroeder apologized to her family and Peggy Schroeder.
“I didn’t think about what I was doing,” she said. “I didn’t think about forever. I want to go back to when I was little, and I wish I could. I wish I could go back to where we were eating ice cream, and watching movies…I wish I could go back to when she was proud of me.”
In handing down the sentence, Senneff acknowledged that Helm “very much encouraged this act.”
“What it boils down to is this: There is no evidence that Anna Schroeder did not know the difference between right and wrong,” she said. No one forced her to commit this act. She thought of a plan to kill her mother and burn down her house to cover it up.
“She chose to act in this evil manner and then tried to get away with it.”
Schroeder will receive credit for 1,581 already served in juvenile detention and the Whiteside County Jail. She also will get day-for-day credit and must serve one year of mandatory supervised release once she completes her sentence, Senneff ordered.
Kristina Adkins was a thirteen year old from Michigan who would murder her Grandmother. According to court documents Kristina Adkins would steal her Grandfather’s morphine pills and would use it to poison her Grandmother Virginia Bentley. Kristina Adkins would be arrested and ultimately would plead guilty to the murder. This teen killer would be sentenced to life with no shot at parole until 2037
A 16-year-old girl who admitted poisoning her grandmother at their Addison-area home two years ago was taken to a women’s prison Friday to begin a life sentence as an adult.
“I really am sorry. I can sit here and tell you I’m sorry over and over again and it won’t make any difference,” a tearful Kristina Adkins said at her sentencing hearing in Lenawee County Probate Court. “I not only took someone from you that you loved, but someone I loved,” she said to family and friends in the courtroom.
Kristina Adkins pleaded guilty to second-degree murder three weeks ago in the same courtroom. She said she intended to kill her grandmother, 53-year-old Virginia Bentley, by slipping her grandfather’s morphine pills into capsules of Bentley’s medication. She died at her Rollin Township home on Aug. 1, 2006.
The life prison term handed down by Judge Margaret M.S. Noe was a stronger punishment than Ireland “Buzz” Bentley?Jr. said he expected his step-granddaughter to receive.
“I think what the court did was right,” Buzz Bentley said. But nothing can make up for the loss, he added.
“No matter what they give her, my wife got a worse sentence,” he said. “They say there’s going to be closure at the end of this, but I don’t feel any closure. I still don’t have my wife.”
Why Kristina Adkins would kill the woman who raised her since she was an infant remains unclear.
“Nobody knows but her,” said Buzz Bentley. The only conflict he knew of at the time was his wife’s plan to homeschool Adkins and her older sister because of behavior problems they were having.
“Things are not like they seem to be, that’s all I can say,” said Doris Dupuie, Virginia Bentley’s mother and Kristina’s great-grandmother.
Dupuie said she has been visiting Kristina Adkins regularly at the Maurice Spear Campus since she was charged in December with murder. They were not allowed to discuss the case during the visits, however, and Dupuie said she does not understand why Kristina would do what she confessed to doing.
A letter Kristina Adkins sent her included a drawing of a heart with the name Virginia Bentley and the dates of her birth and death. She also drew a rose inside the heart, Dupuie said, and wrote next to it, “Please foregive me.”
Dupuie said she had the drawing laminated and planned to place it Friday on her daughter’s grave, she said, as Kristina Adkins asked in the letter.
“She wanted her mom, her grandmother, to know she didn’t really mean it,” Dupuie said.
Defense attorney Michael McFarland of Adrian said Kristina Adkins never gave a direct explanation for wanting to kill her grandmother.
“I think it was cumulative of her entire life experience,” McFarland said.
At the sentence hearing, McFarland told the court that Kristina had a troubled childhood that included mental health problems and drug abuse by the time she was 13. McFarland said she also told psychologists about both mental and physical abuse in the Bentley home.
He said she initially intended to kill her grandmother with the morphine tablets but changed her plan to only keeping her ill and in bed by continuing to put morphine in her medicine.
“Kristina is not the same individual she was at the age of 13,” McFarland told the court. “She has very deep sorrow, sincere sorrow I believe, for destroying their family.”
McFarland argued she be sentenced as a juvenile or at least assigned to a juvenile facility to the age of 21 before serving any additional time in an adult prison.
“She wants to change her life. She wants to come out of the system a better person so she can give back,” McFarland said.
Kristina told the court she is taking responsibility for what she did and is dealing with her drug problems.
“In the last 10 months, I’m not the same person I was in November 2007,” she told Noe. “I know I have made things difficult for myself. But I’m not going to let that hold me back.”
Buzz Bentley told the court he and his wife always put the two girls first in their lives since they took over raising them when Kristina was only 8 months old. He said his wife was strict because she wanted to protect the girls from bad influences.
“You see, Kristina, you grew up not caring about anyone else,” he said.
“I personally don’t think there is much help the court could give that would benefit you,” he said. “I hope that, whatever the sentence is, you think of Ginny while you serve it. You not only took her life, you took mine.”
Lenawee County Prosecutor Jonathan Poer asked the court for an adult sentence.
“While she may be a teenager, the result of her conduct is undeniable and permanent,” Poer said. Society would not be protected if Kristina was placed in a juvenile facility, he said, adding that she told a probation officer she is not sure if she might kill again. Poer said that Kristina saw her grandmother in pain for several days from the morphine before increasing the dose to a fatal level.
Noe agreed the severity of the crime and the risk to society are too great for a sentence to a juvenile facility.
“She was your guardian, your grandmother, the person who raised you from 8 months of age, and you murdered her in a cold and calculated manner,” Noe told Kristina. The lives of all in her family are forever distorted by the killing, she said.
There is no evidence to support claims she was abused, Noe said, and described the complaints as similar to those often made by children against those who discipline them.
“I believe you have probably embarked on major changes in your life,” Noe told her. But she said Kristina showed no willingness to improve her behavior problems until after she was charged with the murder and placed in the county juvenile facility.
Noe urged Kristina to continue her education and treatment for mental health and drug problems while in prison to prepare for parole review in the future.
Kristina Adkins is currently incarcerated at the Huron Valley Correctional Complex
Kristina Adkins Release Date
Kristina Adkins is serving a life sentence however can apply for parole in 2037
Kristina Adkins Other News
The mother of a Michigan teenager who fatally poisoned her grandmother with morphine has been charged in the unrelated slaying of a Kentucky man.
Thirty-three-year-old Tina Adkins and two others are charged with complicity to murder in the death of 38-year-old Gregory Allen Shepherd. Authorities say the three led police to his body Tuesday in a field in Kentucky’s Knott County.
No attorney is on record at the Floyd County Detention Center where Adkins is held.
The Daily Telegram of Adrian reports Adkins is the mother of 16-year-old Kristina Adkins, who was sentenced last month as an adult to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 20 years.
Kristina Adkins pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for killing 53-year-old Virginia Bentley in Lenawee County
Jessica Holtmeyer was a sixteen year old from Pennsylvania who would brutally murder a classmate. According to court documents Jessica Holtmeyer. Kimberly Dotts, 15, and a group of other teens were performing an odd ritual in which each member would put a noose around their necks. However when Kimberly Dotts would put the noose around her neck she would be brutally attacked by Jessica Holtmeyer who repeatedly struck her with a rock causing her death. Jessica Holtmeyer would be sentenced to life in prison without parole however it would be changed to life in prison with a chance of parole after 36 years. The teen killer appealed her sentenced however nothing changed.
Jessica Holtmeyer 2023 Information
Name
Name Type
JESSICA N HOLTMEYER
Commit Name
JESSICA NICHOLE HOLTMEYER
True Name
Parole Number: 278HY Age: 39 Date of Birth: 03/01/1982 Race/Ethnicity: WHITE Height: 5′ 09″ Gender: FEMALE Citizenship: USA Complexion: LIGHT Current Location: MUNCY
The 2018 sentence of a former Clearfield County woman to a prison term of 35 years to life for a murder she committed as a minor was affirmed Monday by the Pennsylvania Superior Court
The state appeals court rejected a request by Jessica Nicole Holtmeyer, now 38, to grant her a resentencing hearing, because, she claimed, the sentence was essentially life without parole, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on 2012 was, for a minor, a violation of the Eighth Amendment barring “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Superior Court Judge Megan King wrote in a 23-page opinion that the sentence imposed by Senior Judge Daniel L. Howsare does not constitute a de facto life without parole sentence.
“The court resentenced (Holtmeyer) to 35 years to life imprisonment for first-degree murder. (She) has been incarcerated since she was 16 years old and will be eligible for parole when she is 51 years old,” the opinion stated.
Judges Deborah A. Kunselman and James G. Colins, joined the opinion.
Holtmeyer has been incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy after initially being sentenced in 1999 to life without parole for the murder of Kimberly Dotts, 15, who along with Holtmeyer, was a member of a group of teens calling themselves “The Runaways.”
The name came about because the six teens, ages 14 to 18, had decided in May 1999 to leave Clearfield County and travel to Florida.
Both Holtmeyer and Dotts were part of the group that decided to hold a “bizarre” initiation rite in which they forged a noose using rope stolen from a cabin and, after throwing it over a tree limb, each teen took a turn at placing the noose around his or her neck.
Things turned ugly when Dotts placed the noose around her neck.
Holtmeyer, who alleged Dotts was a “snitch,” and her boyfriend, Aaron Straw, 18, would not let Dotts remove the noose.
Instead they pulled it until Dotts was on her tiptoes and in tears.
They momentarily relented allowing Dotts to remove the rope due to the sound of an approaching vehicle.
After the vehicle passed, the victim again placed her head in the noose and it was once again pulled tight until she passed out and stopped breathing.
Her body dropped to the ground, at which point the victim began to revive.
Holtmeyer then used a rock to kill Dotts, striking her twice in the face.
On March 24, 1999, Holtmeyer was sentenced to life without parole, a mandatory sentence in Pennsylvania for first-degree murder.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama, and a subsequent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling, did not rule out a life without parole sentence for first-degree murder, but it limited the sentence to individuals who are considered “permanently incorrigible, irreparably corrupt or irretrievably depraved.”
According to the Superior Court, the law now states, “there is a presumption against sentencing a juvenile to life without parole, which the Commonwealth can rebut if it proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the juvenile is incapable of rehabilitation.”
Jessica Holtmeyer requested a resentencing hearing, which was granted.
The Commonwealth agreed with the defense that Holtmeyer was capable of being rehabilitated, and testimony taken during the resentencing process indicated she has taken steps toward rehabilitation during her years behind bars.
A reentry service coordinator from Muncy pointed out that Holtmeyer worked as a reentry support specialist who helped other inmates to prepare for life after prison.
She furthered her education and was employed in the prison. She was involved in a program titled House of Hope.
Other experts testified Holtmeyer was well prepared for reentry, including a psychologist who explained that at the time of the murder, Holtmeyer suffered from a condition called “automatic obedience” due to “extreme traumatization” at the hands of her boyfriend.
The psychologist contended that Holtmeyer “has been rehabilitated.”
The defense argued that Howsare had placed too much weight on the seriousness of the incident, and a 20-year-old victim statement from the Dotts’ family, and not enough attention to Holtmeyer’s rehabilitation efforts.
Judge Howsare replied that he did consider the seriousness of the crime, pointing out, “One could only imagine the horror this 15-year-old girl experienced before she died.”
The Superior Court concluded, “nothing in the record indicates the resentencing court placed undue weight on the gravity of the offenses.”
Holtmeyer’s former boyfriend, Straw, is incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution at Dallas.
Holtmeyer’s attorney, Patrick Lavelle of DuBois, could not be reached for comment.
Jessica Holtmeyer is currently incarcerated at the Muncy Correctional Institute
Jessica Holtmeyer Release Date
Jessica Holtmeyer is serving a life sentence however can apply for parole when she is 51 years old
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