Imagine your son is on his high school football team. When he misses practice and nobody knows where he is, the first thing any parent would do is call the police to report him missing—he’d never willingly miss football practice.
The parents of the high school teen in this true crime couldn’t find him for 24 hours. The local authorities found his truck on the side of a road. They found the keys in the ignition and blood in the cab. Later, they found the teen wandering near where they’d found his truck—shirtless and barefoot.
He claimed to not recall what had happened to him. Upon further inspection, the authorities question his story because he didn’t look ‘roughed-up’ and his feet didn’t have the appearance of being barefoot for any length of time.
At another scene, an employer asked for the authorities to do a welfare check on a man (51) who’d missed several shifts. The man’s mother opened her son’s home for the authorities. They found her son deceased, someone had shot and stabbed him many times. His unharmed German Shepherd dog laid next to him.
Not knowing the two scenes were connected, the authorities launched a murder investigation. Upon reviewing the security video from the previous few days from when they believed the murder had happened, they saw the missing football player (16) and his friend (17) break into the murdered man’s home through a dog door.
While connecting the two crimes, the football player’s father let the police know his son had been at the man’s home because a biker club member told his son to steal something from the boy's mother’s ex-boyfriend’s home. The murdered man had been a member of a biker club, but the authorities found no connection to the two teens. However, the murdered man and the football player’s mother had been in a relationship—which may have factored into the motive for murder.
The football player showed the authorities where they’d tossed the handguns—one matched the caliber used in the murder.
They charge both teens as adults and later they pleaded guilty to second degree murder.
The judge at their sentencing said,
“The crime committed was nothing short of horrific and deliberate.” She also said, “I take no pleasure in presiding over a sentencing like this.”
She sentenced both boys to over 12 years in prison.