DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (AP) – A man who killed and dismembered his girlfriend’s 14-year-old daughter as part of a rape-murder fantasy he shared with the teenager’s mother was sentenced Thursday to death.
Jacob Sullivan, 46, had pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and related charges for killing Grace Packer in 2016.
After deliberating over parts of three days, a suburban Philadelphia jury imposed the death penalty. Sullivan had no reaction as the verdict was read. Pennsylvania has a moratorium on the death penalty, but juries can still impose the sentence.
“The butchery in this case was beyond my ability to describe,” Bucks County Judge Diane Gibbons told jurors, thanking them for their service. Imposing the jury’s sentence on Sullivan, she declared: “You have no soul.”
District Attorney Matthew Weintraub had asked the jury to send Sullivan to death row, reminding them that Grace’s life “ended in a house of horrors that became a hell on Earth.”