DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania man should be put to death for killing and dismembering his girlfriend’s 14-year-old daughter as part of a rape-murder fantasy he and the teen’s mother shared, a prosecutor declared Friday as he described how the victim fought for her life.
Jacob Sullivan, 46, pleaded guilty to all charges last month in a case that raised questions about the child welfare system’s failure to protect Grace Packer, who spent years in an abusive home before she was raped, drugged, bound and gagged for hours and then, finally, strangled in the attic of a suburban Philadelphia home in 2016.
Prosecutors said Grace’s adoptive mother, Sara Packer, plotted the crime with Sullivan and watched him violate and kill her daughter. Sara Packer, a former foster parent and county adoptions supervisor, agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence and is scheduled to testify at the penalty phase of Sullivan’s trial, which opened Friday outside Philadelphia. It’s expected to last several days.
In his opening statement, Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said he would be asking the jury to impose the death penalty for Sullivan’s “awful, unspeakable, heinous crimes.” Sullivan and Packer “decided together that Grace was not worth the air she breathed,” Weintraub said.
Sullivan’s lawyer, Jack Fagan, asked jurors to spare Sullivan’s life, saying he should get the same sentence as Sara Packer. Fagan said Packer was controlling and manipulative, hated Grace long before she met Sullivan online in 2013, and masterminded the rape and murder plot.
“Sara Packer was the driving factor in the intent, the planning and the execution of what happened to her daughter,” he said.
The defense plans to call Packer as a witness.
The jury that will decide Sullivan’s sentence must be unanimous to impose the death penalty; otherwise Sullivan will get life without parole. Even if he’s sentenced to death, it’s unclear whether the punishment would ever be carried out. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf declared a moratorium on capital punishment in 2015. Pennsylvania last carried out an execution in 1999.
Sara Packer and her husband at the time, David Packer, adopted Grace and her brother in 2007. The couple cared for dozens of foster children before David Packer was sent to prison for sexually assaulting Grace and a 15-year-old foster daughter at their Allentown home, about an hour outside Philadelphia.
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