A Gun Under His Bed

He was five years older than his girlfriend. If they’d both been adults, that would’ve been fine. But she was 15 when they began dating. She kept his age secret from her mother and stepfather. They had a blended family.

When her mother went through her cell phone, she learned the boyfriend’s true age and that her daughter and he had been intimate. The parents forbade her from seeing the young man. At first, she complied, but the boy was persistent.

They secretly saw each other. Then after the family returned from their annual vacation to the coast, someone shot the parents to death.

As local law enforcement investigated the crime, they saw too much evidence that pointed them to an inside job. Someone had obviously broken the glass on the parents’ bedroom exterior door from the inside out, and they found nothing was missing.

They interviewed the daughter’s boyfriend three times and felt he made deceptive and inconsistent statements. After one interview, the detective gave the boyfriend a ride home and looked around his bedroom. When he saw a gun under his bed, he asked about the weapon. The boyfriend said he’d never fired it. A neighbor said they’d seen him target shooting with a gun that looked a lot like the one under his bed. Armed with a search warrant, investigators seized the weapon and the young man’s cell phone.

The daughter denied having anything to do with the crime. Their texting streams told a different story. Then the ballistics on the seized weapon came back as a match to what killed the parents, and the father’s blood was on the weapon.

The boyfriend knew too many details, which no one had shared publicly. At the last interview, he confessed to murder. He told them the girlfriend let him inside, where he shot the mother, then the father.

Rather than go to trial, he pleaded guilty to two counts of murder. A judge sentenced him to 60 years in prison.

The daughter pleaded guilty to complicity to commit murder. A judge sentenced her to 23 years in prison.

You cannot appeal the sentence after pleading guilty in the state where the crime occurred.

Source: Oxygen True Crime, NBC Lex18, Mountain News WYMT

All data and information provided is for information and research purposes only and not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual. Appeals or overturned verdicts may have occurred in criminal cases since I researched them. All information is provided on an as-is basis.