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Thread: Jacob Patrick Sullivan - Pennsylvania

  1. #51
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    Judge in sentencing Jacob Sullivan to death for Grace Packer murder: 'You have no soul'

    By Laurie Mason Schroeder
    Allentown Morning Call

    Jacob Sullivan is headed to death row for the rape and murder of 14-year-old Grace Packer.

    A Bucks County jury deliberated for 12 hours over three days before reaching their verdict. On Wednesday, the panel appeared to be struggling with their life or death decision, but the judge refused to declare them deadlocked — a move that would have triggered an automatic life sentence for Sullivan.

    Gibbons ordered the jurors to return to the Justice Center in Doylestown Thursday morning, and they promptly delivered their verdict: death.

    “You have no soul,” Gibbons told Sullivan in sentencing him to an additional life sentence on the conspiracy account to commit first-degree murder. “I have never said that to another human being in my life, and I hope to not say it again, so I expect to say something similar to Sara Packer.”

    Sullivan, 46, of Horsham, pleaded guilty last month to first-degree murder, rape of a child and related charges. Sullivan admitted he and Sara Packer, Grace’s adoptive mother, dismembered Grace’s body and dumped the remains in Luzerne County, where they were found by hunters on Halloween 2016.

    Sullivan admitted that he and Sara Packer plotted Grace’s rape and murder for months and carried it out on July 8, 2016, in a Richland Township home they had rented.

    Gibbons thanked the jurors and urged them to get counseling if they needed. One juror, a man, appeared to be crying as the panel was being polled on the verdict.

    “The butchery in this case was beyond my ability to describe,” Gibbons said. “To live through it vicariously through the photos and the tapes and the recordings ... must have taken a toll.”

    Sullivan did not react to the verdict. Seconds after it was read, deputies surrounded him and handcuffed him.

    The jurors noted some mitigating factors in Sullivan’s case, such as his lack of a criminal history, but found they were outweighed by the aggravating factor, which was that the murder was committed in the course of another felony.

    As part of a plea deal, Sara Packer will plead guilty to first-degree murder and other crimes and be sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. That hearing was supposed to happen Wednesday, but has been postponed until Friday.

    After the sentencing, District Attorney Matt Weintraub said the case has been an arduous, 2 ˝ year journey.

    “You could not write a horror movie script worse than what happened to Grace Packer,” Weintraub said. "[Sullivan] got what he deserved plain and simple. Death is the appropriate sentence for this man.”

    Sullivan will join 142 inmates on Pennsylvania’s death row, though Pennsylvania has not executed anyone since 1999. Gov. Tom Wolf imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2015.

    The last person to be executed in Pennsylvania was Gary Heidnik, the Philadelphia "House of Horrors" murderer, in 1999.

    https://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/...327-story.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #52
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    Sara Packer sentenced to life and then some for killing daughter with boyfriend. "Evil attracts evil," judge tells her

    By Laurie Mason Schroeder
    Allentown Morning Call

    More than two years after the horrific details of the rape and murder of 14-year-old Grace Packer emerged, the only mother the girl ever really knew was called “evil” by the judge who sentenced her Friday to a life behind bars.

    Bucks County Judge Diane E. Gibbons added 52 to 104 years to Sara Packer’s sentence, ensuring the 44-year-old former Northampton County children and youth case worker would never leave prison.

    In what will likely be the final chapter in a heart-wrenching case, Packer pleaded guilty to her part in a crime that ended when her boyfriend strangled Grace in July 2016.

    “Evil attracts evil,” Gibbons said at sentencing. “Evil recognizes evil. This is what happens when two evil people with similar evil interests get together. People like Grace Packer die.”

    Sara Packer, a former Allentown resident, did not react as the judge announced the sentence, or when Chief Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Schorn described Grace’s life with her as “a prisoner with an unrelenting warden.”

    She did not make a statement, answering only “yes, your honor” in a soft voice when Gibbons asked if she understood the charges.

    Packer seemed so disinterested in the proceedings that Weintraub asked the judge to force her to look at him while he read a victim impact statement. Asked why he took that unusual step, Weintraub said he felt prosecutors were Grace’s voice.

    “For the first 14 years of her life, that woman ignored her and treated her as an inanimate object, as a paycheck,” he said. “I wanted her to listen and know Grace for the first time as people who truly loved her knew Grace.”

    Packer pleaded guilty to 19 charges, including first-degree murder, rape of a child, kidnapping, abuse of a corpse and theft of government funds.

    The last charge stemmed from the $6,179 in Social Security and adoption stipend checks she continued to cash after Grace’s death.

    A former Northampton County adoption supervisor and foster parent, Packer took Grace into her home as a foster child when Grace was 3 years old. She adopted Grace and her younger brother in 2007 with her then-husband, David Packer. The Packers fostered about 30 children, state officials have said.

    “What motivated Sara Packer was simple greed,” Schorn said. “Grace was a source of income.”

    Gibbons spoke for more than an hour, telling Packer that when she first heard the details of the crime, she wondered how a mother could inflict such pain on her child.

    “But then I realized, you were never a parent to Grace. You never wanted to be a parent. The use of the word mother, out of your mouth, is a profanity,” Gibbons said.

    The judge warned Packer that she won’t get a warm reception when she arrives at state prison.

    “The women that you’ll be incarcerated with, do you know where a lot of their children are? In foster care. And they go to bed each night hoping and praying their kids aren’t with a foster parent like you,” Gibbons said.

    The judge said Packer, who has a psychology degree and worked as an adoption supervisor for a number of years, used her knowledge of child psychology to try to bend Grace to her will, and became frustrated when the teen rebelled.

    “You tried to break her. But Grace would not be broken,” she said.

    Packer and Sullivan were arrested in January 2017 after a failed suicide pact.

    He confessed within days, but she refused to talk to investigators until the following July, when she struck a deal to cooperate. In exchange, prosecutors promised she would not face the death penalty like her boyfriend, Jacob Sullivan, who was sentenced to death Thursday.

    At a news conference after the sentencing, Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub said he will give local authorities permission to release a report investigating Grace’s death. He said it will be up to legislators to fix the system that “enabled Grace to be fostered and adopted by a monster like Sara Packer and to be fed to a predator like Jacob Sullivan.”

    “I don’t know what Grace’s law would look like,” he said. “I would love to read it someday.”

    Weintraub said the outcome of the Packer and Sullivan cases are the “best we can do in the justice system.”

    Weintraub explained during Sullivan’s penalty phase hearing that investigators did not know the extent of Packer’s role in Grace’s death at the time the deal was struck. Once the facts were established, it was clear that Packer — who did not carry out the actual murder even though she helped plan it — would not have been eligible for capital punishment.

    Sullivan’s defense attorneys used her deal as a mitigating factor in their attempt to save his life. They argued that Sullivan deserved the same sentence, and that he acted under the “substantial domination” of Sara Packer.

    Called to the stand in Sullivan’s defense last week, Packer surprised the court by saying Sullivan was the one who wanted to rape Grace.

    “I got caught up in Jake’s fantasy,” she told the jury. “I didn’t think I could say no without losing him.”

    Packer’s attorneys, Keith Williams and John Fioravanti, offered little evidence. Fioravanti told the judge that Packer was the editor of her yearbook at Pleasant Valley High School, and was described by one teacher as a brilliant student.

    “She has severe issues, undoubtedly,” Fioravanti added.

    Sullivan, 46, pleaded guilty last month to first-degree murder, rape of a child and related charges. He admitted that he and Packer plotted Grace’s rape and murder for months and carried it out on July 8, 2016, in a Richland Township home they had rented.

    After they left the girl bound and gagged in a sweltering attic closet to die, they returned on July 9 to find her alive. And then Sullivan strangled her.

    Sullivan said he and Packer dismembered Grace’s body and dumped the remains in Luzerne County, where they were found by hunters on Halloween 2016.

    Sara Packer had a history of isolating and mistreating Grace. During her testimony at Sullivan’s sentencing she called Grace a “non-entity” and admitted to coldly watching as Grace pleaded for her mother’s help while Sullivan was raping her.

    Because of what Grace had endured, Weintraub referred to her as a forgotten child. At the news conference, he said he was wrong about that.

    “Grace was not a forgotten child, I learned this through this process, having spent the last two weeks with her family,” he said. “Grace was loved, and she is missed and she will be remembered by her family every day.”

    As the hearing ended, Gibbons said she was profoundly affected by the case.

    “Grace will stay with me for the rest of my life,” she said, staring at Packer. “You enjoy the state penitentiary for the rest of your life.”

    (source: Allentown Morning Call)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #53
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    Man sentenced to death for raping, killing Grace Packer trying to get off death row

    WFMZ Allentown News

    DOYLESTOWN, Pa. - The man sentenced to death for raping and killing his girlfriend's 14-year-old adopted daughter filed a post sentence motion Wednesday to have his death sentence stayed or set aside.

    Jacob Sullivan was sentenced to death for raping and killing his girlfriend's 14-year-old adopted daughter Grace Packer in 2016.

    Sullivan and his defense team want a life sentence imposed instead, Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub said.

    A judge rejected the motion to set aside the death penalty, although the judge still has to issue a formal opinion.

    Sullivan is challenging his sentence on a number of grounds, including calling coercive the judge's instruction that the jury keep deliberating after they said they were struggling to reach a unanimous verdict.

    The jury ended up reaching a unanimous verdict on his death sentence the next day.

    Weintraub said the judge had read "specific instructions tailored for this situation."

    All death penalty sentences are automatically appealed to the state Supreme Court.

    Sullivan and his girlfriend, Sara Packer, planned and carried out a rape-murder fantasy the two shared, then dismembered Grace Packer's body and dumped her remains in Luzerne County.

    The two tried to kill themselves in 2017 but survived, and Sullivan confessed the gruesome details of the crimes to hospital workers and detectives while he was in the hospital.

    https://www.wfmz.com/news/southeaste...row/1085736937
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  4. #54
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Edited:

    Jacob Sullivan, Grace Packer’s murderer and rapist, dies of natural causes

    By leighvalleylive.com

    A Bucks County man on death row for the rape, murder and dismemberment of 14-year-old Grace Packer has died of natural causes, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections confirmed Friday.

    The department would only confirm the 47-year-old Jacob Sullivan died of natural causes; NBC 10 reported Sullivan died of a ruptured aortic aneurism.

    Sullivan was housed at SCI Phoenix in Montgomery County, but was not in the state prison’s care at the time and died at a local hospital, a spokeswoman said.

    https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/leh...in-prison.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  5. #55
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    What a waste of money and time.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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