A Minor Inconvenience in His Life

It’s not unusual for a 23-year-old son attending college to live with his parents. What is unusual is the son lying about attending college when he’d flunked out. He also lied about being offered an amazing job.

Then one day, the son went to the police department and reported his parents were missing—mother, aged 53, and father, aged 50. They’d gone to their cabin in the mountains with friends the son didn’t know and hadn’t returned when he said they were due back.

Two police officers went to the family home to look around. They noticed sections of flooring had been removed, and next to the front door, a half wall was no longer there. Assuming some home remodeling was in progress, nothing else seemed out of place.

The more the son talked with officers, the more his account of timelines and events sounded off. A canvas of the neighbors added to the confusion. The son had said his father took a large sum of cash with him on their trip—a neighbor said the father was a “cheap skate” and him having a large sum of cash made no sense. The son also said his parents took a significant amount of alcohol with them on the trip—another neighbor said the parents were light drinkers and when they’d gone to the cabin with them, a bottle of wine with dinner was the extent of the drinking.

What sealed the deal on the son’s suspicious behavior was his girlfriend sharing her tracking app with the police, which showed the son had been in a wooded area he hadn’t disclosed to the police. When they looked in the area, they found the dismembered remains of his father.

Someone called in to report that a person matching the son’s description had been along the river on a day during the time his parents were supposedly missing. Law enforcement checked that lead out and found some of the dismembered parts of his mother’s body.

The authorities arrested the son.

Another, more thorough search of the home found hundreds of human bone fragments in the family’s fireplace.

The prosecution stated that the father had found out there was a problem with college and on the day the son murdered his father, the father and son had an appointment to speak with someone at the college.

A deputy district attorney associated with the case said about the son,

“When faced with, in the grand scheme of things, a minor inconvenience in his life, [the son] chose to commit first-degree homicide two times.”

His trial lasted seven days. The jury took less than three hours to reach a guilty verdict. Guilty on two counts of each—first-degree homicide, mutilating a corpse, hiding a corpse, and falsifying information about a missing person.

Before issuing his sentence, the judge said,

“I have to, for this sentencing, ensure that the only time [the son] comes back into the community is to have the privilege of the burial he denied his parents.”

The judge then sentenced the 24-year-old to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Source: State Circuit Court, CBS News, Oxygen True Crime

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.