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Deputies: 16-year-old girl sought someone to kill family

Authorities arrest the girl, saying she offered $500 to have her parents and sister killed.

By DUANE BOURNE
Published March 8, 2005

SPRING HILL - The 16-year-old girl hung a piece of board on her bedroom door with the intention that unwelcomed guests who opened the door would be hit in the head by a nail protruding from the falling wood.

Later, she tried to rig the doorknob with electricity to shock anyone who tried to open the door.

When those plans proved ineffective, investigators said, the girl wrote letters to friends hoping that, for $500, they would finish the job of killing her family.

Those who received the letters were not planning to carry out the request when the girl's mother found out about her daughter's plot last week.

The girl admitted to sending the letters to at least two people, including her ex-boyfriend, who is in jail. She also gave startling details about her other attempts to kill her mother, father and younger sister. After sheriff's detectives interviewed her Friday afternoon, she was arrested and charged with solicitation to commit murder, a felony.

The girl, who relatives say is a habitual runaway, was taken to the Juvenile Detention Center in Ocala, where she was held without bail. The names of the teen and her relatives are being withheld by the Times because of her age and the nature of the allegations.

Monday, sheriff's spokeswoman Deputy Donna Black could not release the contents of the letters, citing an ongoing investigation. However, she said the motive behind the murder-for-hire plot appeared to be that of a troubled teen, who wanted to get rid of her family.

"She was just having family trouble and was upset with her family," Black said without elaborating further.

The Hernando County Sheriff's Office began investigating Wednesday after a friend of the girl's mother called and told her that she was alarmed by the things the teen had said.

The girl's mother called the State Attorney's Office and the Department of Children and Families looking for help. Two days later, she said deputies were at her door in Spring Hill.

The girl thought her parents were too strict, her mother said.

As a detective reviewed the correspondence, he learned that the girl had written letters to several juvenile acquaintances, asking them to have her mother, father and younger sister killed, a sheriff's report said.

Black said the two minors mentioned in the arrest affidavit will not be charged in the conspiracy because they did not plan to fulfill the girl's request. Authorities are withholding their names.

During the investigation, authorities learned that she had tried booby-trapping her bedroom door and electrifying the doorknob.

--Duane Bourne can be reached at 352 754-6114 or dbourne@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 8, 2005, 16:52:55]