Cindy Collier and Shirley Wolf Teen Killers

Cindy Collier and Shirley Wolf Teen Killers

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.

Cindy Collier and Shirley Wolf Other News

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.

Cindy Collier and Shirley Wolf
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Cindy Collier and Shirley Wolf Other News

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.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/teen-girls-brutally-murder-woman-85-fun-1983-article-1.3426680

Dakotah Eliason Teen Killer – Kills Sleeping Grandfather

Dakotah Eliason teen killer

Dakotah Eliason was fifteen years old when he shot his Grandfather who was sleeping. According to court documents Dakotah Eliason would grab a gun, walk over to his Grandfather who was sleeping on the couch. According to family friends Eliason was dealing with a deep depression having lost a number of crucial people in a short time span. This teen killer would be sentenced to life in prison however it would later be changed to 37 to 60 years in prison making him eligible for parole in 2047

Dakotah Eliason 2023 Information

Current Status:Prisoner

Earliest Release Date:03/05/2047

Assigned Location:Carson City Correctional Facility

Maximum Discharge Date:03/05/2072

Security Level:II

Dakotah Eliason Other News

One of the youngest people convicted of murder in Berrien County will be eligible for parole. Dakotah Eliason was re-sentenced Friday to 37 to 60 years in prison for the murder of his step-grandfather, Jesse Miles, which he committed at the age of 14. He apologized in court in Niles Friday morning.

Hartz criticized the more than a dozen family members of Dakotah Eliason who were in court in Niles Friday to support him, saying if half of them had been there for the teen when he needed it, Jesse Miles would probably still be alive.

Dakotah Eliason was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2010, but a U.S. Supreme Court ruling tossing out that harsh of a penalty juvenile offenders offered him the chance for parole. He was 14 when he shot Miles as he slept on his couch following several hours of premeditation. Eliason’s defense attorney pointed out that he has been a model citizen while incarcerated, has earned his GED, and has taught GED classes for other inmates. He broke down in tears as his grandmother addressed the court in support of him. Other family members of the victim, including his daughter and son-in-law, argued that Dakotah Eliason should remain in prison without the chance for parole.

https://www.wsjm.com/2015/06/26/dakotah-eliason-resentenced-for-step-grandfathers-murder/

Dakotah Eliason Other News

A young Michigan man serving a life sentence for killing his grandfather at age 14 will get a new sentence and a chance at freedom, a judge said Friday.

Dakotah Eliason, now 19, will be sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison and a maximum of 60 years, Berrien County Judge Scott Schofield said.

“He’s pleased to have the opportunity to show he’s growing up and should have a chance for parole,” attorney Jonathan Sacks told the South Bend Tribune.

There is no dispute that Eliason shot his grandfather, Jesse Miles, 69, in Buchanan in 2010. He was convicted of first-degree murder and given a mandatory life sentence with no opportunity for parole.

But the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently said teens convicted of first-degree murder must be treated differently than adults. Judges now have more options after they hold a hearing that explores a convicted killer’s childhood, education and other factors.

Schofield said there’s potential for Dakotah Eliason to be rehabilitated. He would be eligible for parole after serving 25 years.

“The developmental disparity between an adolescent male’s feeling brain and thinking brain can help explain defendant’s horrific choice to kill his grandfather,” the judge wrote. “This imbalance … disappears once a young man moves into his mid-20s and his thinking brain catches up.”

Dakotah Eliason’s behavior during five years in prison “shows an increasing ability to make well-considered decisions,” Schofield said.

Berrien County Prosecutor Mike Sepic had argued for another no-parole sentence. Eliason will return to court on June 26.

“This is new territory and a matter of opinion,” Sepic said.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/05/29/dakotah-eliason-berrien-county-resentencing/28187349/

Dakotah Eliason Videos

Dakotah Eliason Other News

​In March 2010, 15-year-old Dakotah Eliason shot and killed his grandfather.  After the shooting, Eliason said that he had been contemplating homicide or suicide, and that he shot his grandfather our of “sadness” and “pent up anger,” but that he was not angry with his grandfather, but was instead angry with his parents.  The police officers who interviewed Dakotah Eliason remarked on his composure immediately after the shooting and his apparent lack of remorse.  At trial, witnesses testified that Eliason had a friend who had recently committed suicide as well as a cousin who was killed in a car accident.  Eliason’s pet dog had also recently died.  Eliason was an honor-roll student who had no prior behavioral problems. 

Eliason was convicted by a jury of first-degree premeditated murder and felony firearm.  His attorney objected that mandatory life sentences for juveniles were unconstitutional, but the trial court disagreed, and sentenced Dakotah Eliason to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder conviction. 

Dakotah Eliason Photos

Dakotah Eliason
Dakotah Eliason

Dakotah Eliason FAQ

Dakotah Eliason Now

Dakotah Eliason is currently incarcerated at Carson City Correctional Facility

Dakotah Eliason Release Date

Dakotah Eliason is serving a 60 year sentence however is eligible for parole in 2047

Dakotah Eliason Other News

Dakotah Eliason, now 19, will be sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison and a maximum of 60 years, Berrien County Judge Scott Schofield said.

“He’s pleased to have the opportunity to show he’s growing up and should have a chance for parole,” attorney Jonathan Sacks told the South Bend Tribune.

There is no dispute that Eliason shot his grandfather, Jesse Miles, 69, in Buchanan in 2010. He was convicted of first-degree murder and given a mandatory life sentence with no opportunity for parole.

But the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently said teens convicted of first-degree murder must be treated differently than adults. Judges now have more options after they hold a hearing that explores a convicted killer’s childhood, education and other factors.

Schofield said there’s potential for Eliason to be rehabilitated. He would be eligible for parole after serving 25 years.

“The developmental disparity between an adolescent male’s feeling brain and thinking brain can help explain defendant’s horrific choice to kill his grandfather,” the judge wrote. “This imbalance … disappears once a young man moves into his mid-20s and his thinking brain catches up.”

Eliason’s behavior during five years in prison “shows an increasing ability to make well-considered decisions,” Schofield said.

Berrien County Prosecutor Mike Sepic had argued for another no-parole sentence. Eliason will return to court on June 26.

“This is new territory and a matter of opinion,” Sepic said

John Caudle Teen Killer Murders Parents

John Caudle

John Caudle was fourteen years old when he murdered his mother and stepfather. According to court documents John Caudle would shoot his mother nine times after she grounded him for failing to get her a soda. This teen killer would wait until his stepfather drove up and would shoot him three times causing his death. John Caudle told the court he was under a ton of stress from the mistreatment he received from his parents. The court would ultimately sentence this teen killer to twenty two years in prison

John Caudle 2023 Information

John Caudle 2022
Name:CAUDLE, JOHN M
Age:23
Ethnicity:WHITE
Gender:MALE
Hair Color:BROWN
Eye Color:GREEN
Height:5′ 11″
Weight:110
DOC Number:154438
Est. Parole
Eligibility Date:01/08/2024
Next Parole
Hearing Date:Oct 2023
This offender is scheduled on the Parole Board agenda for the month and year above. Please contact the facility case manager for the exact date.
Est. Mandatory
Release Date:06/28/2029
Est. Sentence
Discharge Date: 
Current Facility
Assignment:INTERSTATE CORRECTION COMPACT TRANSFER

John Caudle Other News

Two John Caudles emerged in a Rio Grande County District courtroom Thursday.

One, a scrawny 15-year-old, is a battered child, belittled by his mother who called him names and punished him by withholding food and seizing his beloved books. His stepfather called him “faggot,” which made his mom laugh.

That Caudle, who still sucks his thumb, “just didn’t want to take it anymore.”

The other is a calculating killer angry about the chores his mother wanted him to perform. To get even, he hid two guns in his room. He shot his mother nine times and then lay in wait for his stepfather and shot him twice in the head.

That conflicting picture of Caudle emerged at his preliminary hearing Thursday for first-degree murder in the two deaths in October in the family’s rural Monte Vista home in south-central Colorado. He is being charged as an adult.

“He said he felt more like a slave than a son,” said Delia Malouff, a 16-year-old who testified in Rio Grande District Court about conversations the two had in the Pueblo Youth Detention Center.

Interview tape played

In a police interview played in the courtroom, the teenager told investigators he was done with the chores, the names and the abuse.

“I didn’t want to hurt anymore,” he said in the interview, taped the day police found the bodies of his mother and stepfather, Joanne and Tracy Rinebarger.

The night before the Oct. 26 killing, Caudle told investigators, he removed two .22-caliber handguns from the home’s gun safe, loaded them and stashed them in his room.

Caudle told the investigators he had returned from school on Oct. 26 and “just looked at” his mother. She railed at him about chores. He was already grounded for two weeks for “pitching a fit” about yardwork. She called him names, he said.

“What names?” asked Detective Amy Frank with the Park County Sheriff’s Office.

“A-hole. Jackass. Stupid idiot. Donkey. Dumb,” said Caudle, who repeated the words only at Frank’s prodding.

He went to his room and retrieved the pistols. He raised the gun toward his mother. He fired.

“I tried to shoot her in the head so she wouldn’t feel anything,” he told Frank. “She screamed. She kept screaming.”

Caudle said his stepfather returned from work an hour later. Tracy Rinebarger walked in the door and saw blood. He screamed his wife’s name. Caudle was hiding in the laundry room. When Rinebarger passed the room, Caudle fired.

“I shot him in the back of the head and he was still alive, so I shot him in the front of the head,” Caudle said.

Rinebarger was still breathing.

“He wouldn’t stop,” Caudle said.

So Caudle stuffed his nostrils with ear plugs. Caudle dragged his stepfather’s body to the back bedroom and laid him alongside the body of his wife.

Tracy’s parents, Ron and Patricia Rinebarger, bowed their heads at this point in the video. Caudle, dressed in jail pants and shackled around the legs and waist, also lowered his head as members of his defense team consoled the teen.

During the several-hour interview that stretched well past midnight the day after the shootings, Caudle occasionally sobbed and embraced his grandmother, Verla Miller of Salida, who huddled motionless in the interview room.

“Do you feel better getting this off your chest?” Frank asked.

“I feel worse,” Caudle said.

The defense’s “battered child” approach “feeds into self-defense,” said Special Deputy District Attorney Dan Edwards of the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

“In order to have self-defense, you have to have the imminent risk of serious bodily injury. There is no evidence of that,” Edwards said. “His reasoning was because he was called names. There is no question in this case that this defendant murdered his mother and stepfather with intent after deliberation.”

Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Jodi Wright — under cross examination — described an interview last month with Miller, Caudle’s maternal grandmother. Miller told Wright her daughter Joanne was “too strict,” was “never fair,” yelled often, withheld food from Caudle, “isolated him from other children” and was “very controlling” of her son.

Miller said her grandson “didn’t have anyone to turn to.”

Rio Grande County Undersheriff Charles Chick testified that he went to the Rinebarger home in early 2006 after Joanne called saying her son was trying to run away. Chick said Caudle told him “he was treated like a slave.”

Conversations revealed

Fellow youth-detention resident Malouff went further and said Caudle had told her he was whipped with wire and burned with cigarettes. Prosecutors noted, however, that Caudle also told Malouff lies, including that he had used a shotgun in the killings.

Malouff testified that prosecutors agreed to only charge her as a juvenile rather than an adult in connection with the death of her 7-month-old son in exchange for detailing Caudle’s confession to her.

Caudle told investigators that his violent outburst stemmed from his mother’s insistence on chores. Yet he said that after he killed his parents, he mopped the floor, threw bloody mop pads into the laundry garbage bin and finished doing laundry. He unloaded his stepfather’s 2008 Chevy Silverado pickup before driving it to school the next day. (Later that afternoon, Park County sheriff’s deputies picked him up driving erratically as he passed through Fairplay.)

District Judge Martin Gonzales ended the day-long hearing emphasizing that a preliminary hearing was not a mini-trial, but a proceeding to determine whether there is sufficient probable cause to go to trial.

Citing Caudle’s admission that he loaded two pistols and stored them in his room the day before the shooting, the “ambush nature” of the killings and the evidence supporting Caudle’s confession, Gonzales said he had “no problem” binding Caudle over for trial on nine counts that carry the possibility of life in prison without parole.

“These were violent crimes, there is no doubt about that,” said Gonzales, who also declined to set any bail for Caudle, who is being held in the Rio Grande County Jail.

John Caudle: Calculating murderer or battered kid?

John Caudle More News

14 year-old John Caudle has confessed to Colorado police that he killed his mother and step-dad to get out of doing his household chores, reports KUSA in Denver. Caudle’s mother, Joanne Rinebarger, and her husband Tracy Rinebarger, were discovered dead in their home near Monte Vista, Colorado in October. Caudle was arrested the next day 130 Miles north of Monte Vista while driving his parents’ pickup truck. However, district judge Martin Gonzales issued a gag order preventing any press from attending Caudle’s hearing.

According to the recently released arrest affidavit, Caudle admitted he killed his mother because he did not want to take out the trash. He then waited in a closet for his stepfather to come home and shot him several times.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-caudle-14-admits-to_n_436007

John Caudle FAQ

John Caudle Now

John Caudle is serving time outside of the State of Colorado

John Caudle Release Date

John Caudle max release date is in 2029, however he is eligible for parole in 2023

Nebiyu Ebrahim Teen Killer Murders Girlfriend

Nebiyu Ebrahim Teen Killer

Nebiyu Ebrahim was seventeen years old when he murdered his sixteen year old girlfriend Jholie Moussa. According to court documents Nebiyu and the victim were in a bad relationship that was dominated by the teen killer. When he no longer was able to control the sixteen year old girl he would strangle her to death and hide her body which would be found by authorities two weeks later. This teen killer was previously convicted of assaulting the victim was apparently upset that she pressed charges and he was transferred to an alternative school. Nebiyu Ebrahim would be sentenced to life in prison without parole in Virginia.

Nebiyu Ebrahim 2023 Information

  • Personal Information Nebiyu Yesuf Ebrahim Alias:  Nebiyu Ebrahim
  • Age/Race/Sex 20/Black/Male
  • Offender I.D.#1977923
  • Location Wallens Ridge State Prison
  • Release Date Single Life Sentence

Nebiyu Ebrahim Other News

A 19-year-old Virginia man has been sentenced to 99 years in prison for killing his ex-girlfriend and hiding her body in a park in the Mount Vernon area.

Nebiyu Ebrahim had pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Jholie Moussa. News outlets report his sentencing on Wednesday was applauded by her relatives.

In 2018, a 17-year-old Ebrahim strangled the 16-year-old Moussa with his hands, then hid her body under a pile of leaves, later returning to push her into a shallow grave dug with a chef’s knife.

Moussa’s identical twin sister, Zhane, testified that Ebrahim was Moussa’s first boyfriend and soon became abusive. He was convicted of assaulting Moussa in 2017. Zhane Moussa said her sister once said Ebrahim had choked her into unconsciousness.

Nebiyu Ebrahim Gets 99 Years For Strangling Ex Jholie Moussa Buried At Virginia Park

Nebiyu Ebrahim Other News

A Fairfax County teenager who admitted to killing his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend in a “blind rage” will spend at least the next 40 years in prison.

Nebiyu Ebrahim apologized in court today.

An apology that sounded contrived according to Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Casey Lingan.

“Look at the details of what he said — I wanted to spare the trial to you the family. Making himself the hero. Still controlling – there was no remorse,” Lingan said.

Before handing down his sentence, Judge Randy Bellows listed some of the evidence against Ebrahim to include the fact that he used his mother’s phone to Google how long it takes to choke someone to death.

Judge Bellows said the murder was driven by uncontrollable hatred after Ebrahim blamed Jholie for his being transferred to an alternative school for troubled teens.

The evidence shows Ebrahim attacked Jholie Moussa three times over a period of several months. The first time he was caught and charged and ordered to stay away from her. The second time he thought he had killed her but the teen survived. Tragically, she never told anyone about it except a friend. No one went to the police.

The third time, Ebrahim admits he strangled Moussa and buried her in a shallow grave in a Mount Vernon park. Returning at least once to throw more leaves over her body.

“In a way I feel like this was a distraction in the grieving process for us,” said Jholie’s mother Syreeta Seward, “and now we are going to another level of grieving…our lives will never  be the same.”

When Judge Bellows handed down his sentence the family, sitting in the front row of the courtroom, applauded.

“It’s been hell,” said Jholie’s twin sister, Zhane, “it’s been human torture this whole entire thing how court works, it’s human torture and I am just so glad it’s over”.

Jholie Moussa vanished from her Mount Vernon area home on Jan. 12, 2018 after telling her family she would be right back. The disappearance garnered a tremendous amount of attention at the time-in part – because the teen had previously been attacked by Ebrahim.

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/jholie-moussas-ex-boyfriend-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-her-murder

Nebiyu Ebrahim FAQ

Nebiyu Ebrahim Now

Nebiyu Ebrahim is currently incarcerated at the Ridge State Prison

Nebiyu Ebrahim Release Date

Nebiyu Ebrahim is serving a 99 year sentence

Jake Eakin and Evan Savoie Teen Killers

Jake Eakin and Evan Savoie Teen Killers

Jake Eakin and Evan Savoie were both twelve years old when they would murder an autistic teenager. According to court documents Jake and Evan would beat and repeatedly stab Craig Sorger. During trial the information came out that the murder was premeditated from how they would get the victim out of his home, where the murder would take place and the story they would tell police.

Both of the teen killers would be convicted of murder. Eakin would plead guilty and would be sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Savoie went to trial and received a twenty six year prison sentence that would be later be reduced to twenty years. Jake has been released from prison

Jake Eakin And Evan Savoie 2021 Information

Evan Savoie – Current Facility – Airway Heights Corrections Center

Jake Eakin – Released

Jake Eakin and Evan Savoie Other News

Evan D. Savoie is going back to prison.

The 23-year-old man pleaded guilty to murder in the second degree in Grant County Superior Court Monday morning.

Savoie was facing a second trial for murder in the first degree for killing 13-year-old Craig Sorger in 2003.

The Washington State Court of Appeals, Division III, overturned Savoie’s first conviction in October 2011, ruling a closed hearing violated Savoie’s rights.

Savoie faces between 12 years and three months and 21 years and two months in prison when he is sentenced.

Chief Deputy Prosecutor Ed Owens told visiting Douglas County Superior Court Judge John Hotchkiss prosecutors plan to ask for 20 years and four months in prison when Savoie is sentenced, according to court records. The victim’s family doesn’t agree with the resolution, but the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorney’s and Ephrata’s police chief agreed with it.

Savoie was initially sentenced to 26 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of murder in the first degree.

Defense Attorney Michael Felice plans to ask the judge for a lesser sentence, and Savoie will be examined by an expert prior to his sentencing. Felice stated, in a declaration asking for the expert, he plans to present evidence about mitigating circumstances including Savoie’s age maturity, sophistication and developmental condition at the time of the crime.

Savoie and Jake Eakin were 12 years old when they beat and stabbed Sorger to death, according to court records. Savoie dropped a rock on the victim’s head and pressured Eakin to take part.

The day of the murder, Savoie and Eakin were dropped off at Oasis Park in Ephrata. They went to Sorger’s house and invited him to play, according to court records.

Sorger’s mother became concerned when the boy didn’t return. His body was found in Oasis Park.

Eakin pleaded guilty to murder in the second degree in April 2005 and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Jake Eakin And Evan Savoie Videos

Jake Eakin And Evan Savoie Photos

jake eakin and evan savoie
jake eakin and evan savoie 1

Jake Eakin And Evan Savoie More News

Convicted child-murderer Jake Eakin is now a full-time anti-abortion protester.

Eakin and Evan Savoie were both found guilty in the death of Craig Sorger.

It was a brutal case that shocked the small town of Ephrata and made history at the state level because, at the time, the murderers were just children

Now, 15 years later, Eakin says he is now working to save lives because of his violent past. 

Craig Sorger’s 2003 murder

It was February 2003 when 13-year-old Sorger was viciously beaten and stabbed to death in a wooded area near his house in Ephrata.

His mom said two boys came to her door, Savoie and Eakin. They were asking if Sorger, who was considered mildly autistic, could come out and play. That was the last time she saw her son alive.

Sorger’s body was found that night at Oasis Park, covered in leaves and dozens of stab wounds.   

Court records show police immediately suspected Savoie and Eakin. Despite their initial claims that Sorger fell out of a tree, both boys were charged as adults with first-degree murder, making Eakin the youngest in Washington history to face those charges as an adult.

In 2006, Eakin abruptly reversed course. He accepted a plea deal on second-degree murder by complicity. In court, he testified that Savoie had been the ringleader, first attacking Sorger with a large rock, then beating him with tree branches and stabbing him dozens of times with a knife. 

Eakin was eventually sentenced to 14 years in prison and Savoie received 26 years.

At the time, Eakin said he was filled with anger.

“In prison, I spent a lot of time in lock-up, in solitary confinement because of trouble I got into. There was a block of time that I spent 14 months in there. I got out, and then I went back in there and served another nine months. That’s a good two-and-a-half years that I spent by myself. That was the time that I started to educate myself,” he said.  

Eakin said he became an avid reader, devouring works about the Holocaust, slavery and the Bible.

“When the Lord saved me, I was in a county jail,” Eakin said.

After escaping work release in June 2016 and being re-arrested in South Dakota, Eakin was sent to the Yakima County Jail, where he said he found God.

“It was like a radical transformation,” he said.

Even with his newfound faith, Jake Eakin floundered a bit when he was released from jail in 2017. It all changed while watching an abortion protest video on YouTube.

“Something happened in that moment where a switch went off and the Lord kind of opened my eyes to the pre-born and abortion,” Eakin said.

Since then, Eakin has called himself an abolitionist and stages Planned Parenthood protests and anti-LGBTQ demonstrations across the region.

Instead of shrinking away from the public eye, Jake Eakin now seems to welcome the spotlight — some say a bit too much.

“He wants attention. And that’s his goal. That means is just a way to bring more attention to himself,” said Planned Parenthood spokesperson Paul Dillion. “No patient should ever come through our doors and have to face that kind of harassment and intimidation.”

KREM 2 asked Jake Eakin why he uses such abrasive tactics to get attention.

“Well, think of it this way. If we had a holocaust of 2-year-olds, instead of pre-born children, our response would be radically different, right? And so, the reason that I’m an abolitionist is because I believe in being consistent. Meaning, I believe children are being murdered down the street to where I live,” he said.

KREM 2 also asked him what he thinks when people call him the worse kind of hypocrite.

“So, this is where the beautiful thing is for me. We serve a God that can forgive murderers. And so, what I would say is that, we live in a culture that would, rightly, point a finger at me and say ‘murderer,’ ” he responded. “I am a murderer. Been redeemed through Christ. That same grace is being offered to all these mothers and fathers that are taking their children to Planned Parenthood. That’s why I’m out there.”

“I think he’s a con artist. I think he wants money. This is his job and he will say whatever he can to try and have people believe in him,” Dillion said.

Jake Eakin said he does consider his abolitionist ministry a full-time job, sometimes getting paid to do graphics and videos for various organizations. He said he financially supports his family mostly through donations.

What does Craig Sorger’s family think of their son’s murderer? KREM 2 reached out them multiple times but did not hear back. After the murder trial, they told KREM 2 their sense of loss will never be fully healed.

“I would love the opportunity to express to seek their forgiveness, to express my sorrow, to talk to them about their boy,” Jake Eakin said. “There’s probably not a day that goes by that I don’t look back at that. For me, it gives me a greater value of all life. I know how valuable it is. I’ve seen how fragile it is. And now, being older, being a man that’s experienced a lot in life, I can understand more than I could when I was 12 years old.”

Jake Eakin isn’t allowed to contact the Sorger family.

For some, Eakin’s past crime is simply unforgivable, while others believe his past is what makes his message today even more powerful.

https://www.krem.com/article/news/investigations/jake-eakin-child-murderer-to-activist/293-842c0759-10a5-4672-9500-f34f8aa9f774

Jake Eakin And Evan Savoie FAQ

Evan Savoie 2021

Evan Savoie is currently incarcerated at the Airway Heights Corrections Center

Evan Savoie Release Date

Evan Savoie max release date is 2034

Jake Eakin Release

Jake Eakin was released from prison in 2020