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Nancy Grace
Nancy Grace Mysteries: The Julie Schenecker Story
Aired May 16, 2014 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight, anatomy of a double murder. A Florida jury takes less than two hours convict Julie Schenecker of murdering children. NANCY GRACE MYSTERIES examines the shocking evidence and disturbing testimony that led to the verdict. What evidence was key? And why did the jury reject the insanity defense? Jurors speak out right after Schenecker`s explosive reaction to the verdict that will put her behind bars for the rest of her life.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: State of Florida versus Julie Schenecker, case 11CF001376, trial division three. We the jury find as follows in count one of the charge. The defendant is guilty of first degree murder. The defendant did actually possess and discharge a firearm, causing death. We the jury find as follows in count two of the charge. The defendant is guilty of first degree murder. The defendant did actually possess and discharge a firearm, causing death. So say we all. Dated this 15 day in May, 2014. Charles Madison (ph), foreperson of the jury.
JULIE SCHENECKER, CONVICTED OF MURDER: I apologize to everybody in this courtroom who (INAUDIBLE) broken their lives! I have destroyed! I hope they can collect themselves as best as possible, all of us, and not just this courtroom, anybody who knew our family!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mom of two Julie Schenecker stands accused of shooting her boy and girl in cold blood with a.38 revolver because, as she says, they talked back and were mouthy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know what kind of condition they`re in?
JULIE SCHENECKER, CONVICTED OF MURDER: They`re a mess.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They`re a mess? Are they alive or dead?
SCHENECKER: I don`t know.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you think?
SCHENECKER: I hope so.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You hope what?
SCHENECKER: I hope they`re dead.
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Tampa suburbs, police race to a million-dollar mansion to find a little girl at her computer doing homework dead, her little brother in the garage, buckled into the minivan, dead. Cops hone in on Mommy out back by the luxury swimming pool in a bloody housecoat, Mommy calmly explaining she shoots both her children dead in the mouth because they`re sassy. They talk back.
In the last hours, Mommy in her own words after she guns down the two children as stunning police tapes played in court.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Beau was in the car with you?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. And Beau was smarting off to you?
SCHENECKER: (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And then where -- did you shoot Beau?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With that.38?
SCHENECKER: In the side of the head.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: The whole story unfolded when cops received a welfare check request from Schenecker`s mom. Apparently, her mother, Julie Schenecker`s mom, had been trying to reach her daughter and couldn`t.
Now, the back story to this is as follows. Colonel Parker Schenecker, Julie Schenecker`s husband, was stationed overseas in Qatar. He had worked his whole life to climb up the military ladder. In fact, he and Julie had met in Germany, where she was a Russian linguist and he was in special ops.
Long story short there, they fall in love and get married. They travel the world with the military and end up in Florida. He`s still with the military. She`s the quintessential soccer mom.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is your marital status presently?
PARKER SCHENECKER, EX-HUSBAND: Sir, I am divorced.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what -- from whom are you divorced?
PARKER SCHENECKER: Julie Schenecker, the defendant.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you were married for approximately 20 years?
PARKER SCHENECKER: Yes, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: During the 20-year marriage, did you and the defendant have any children?
PARKER SCHENECKER: Yes, sir, we did.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How many and what were their names?
PARKER SCHENECKER: Sir, we had two children. Our daughter was Calyx Power (ph) Schenecker, born on the 12th of September, 1994. And our son was Powers (ph) Beau Schenecker, born the 29th of September, 1997.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: He had been getting phone calls and e-mails from his children, Beau and Calyx, that their mother, Julie Schenecker, had become increasingly difficult to deal with, including getting boozed up and high on Oxycontin while driving and wrecking the car with the children in the car. At the time the children, Calyx and Beau, were gunned down, they had begged their dad not to make them drive -- ride anymore in the car with Julie Schenecker.
All this leads up to Parker Schenecker sending an e-mail from Qatar to Schenecker`s family members saying, You`ve got to help me, she`s laying in bed until 5:00 o`clock every day, she`s not giving them food, cooking for them, taking care of them. I`m really worried. Can you check on her? That leads up -- that sets the stage to what happened that day.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PARKER SCHENECKER: What I said to my ex-wife was that she needed to be the adult in the relationship, that she was reverting to childish tactics with a child, and it was not getting any -- it was not getting anyone anywhere.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was the defendant receptive to your suggestion and analysis?
PARKER SCHENECKER: No, sir.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: It`s very interesting how the police ended up at the Schenecker home to discover the children`s dead bodies, Beau and Calyx, both of them honor students. When Calyx was shot dead, she was at her computer in her bedroom, doing her homework. Beau, the little boy, was still strapped in his carseat in the van. And she had just -- Schenecker had just brought him home from soccer practice. And it`s clear that he knew what his mother was about to do. Police theorize that he held his hands up to stop the bullet, and she shot through the glass to murder her own son.
Look at the evidence that she knew full well what she was doing -- the fact that she went ahead of time to buy the gun, the fact she had the wherewithal to lie to the gun shop owner as to why she wanted buy a gun, the fact that she wrote in her journal, The evil will begin, and names the date of the murders, the fact that she tried to throw off the carpool by, after killing her children, putting a sticky, a yellow sticky on the door saying, Oh, we`ve gone on a trip to New York -- translation, Go away, don`t knock at the door -- that she tried to lure her husband home.
This is a revenge killing, a get-back killing at her husband, for some reason, Parker Schenecker. In fact, after she kills the children, she says, Hurry home, we`re waiting on you, so he could find his children dead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Did anyone want to vote not guilty, or was everyone convinced during the trial?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think everybody was on the page. We had a big discussion on what was going on in her mind at the time of the incident, where she was insane or not. But in the end, we all agreed that she was sane. She knew what she was doing. The shot to the mouth played a big part in that.
GRACE: What do you mean by that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When she -- they was already dead, she went back and shot them in the mouth, the sassy mouth or the mouthy mouth, as she called it in the journal. That just showed hate.
GRACE: You know, that hurt me so bad. That hurt me so bad when I heard that. To think of, after they`re dead, going back and shooting them in the mouth -- that just -- I could barely take it in when I heard that evidence.
How did everybody react on the jury to that fact? You said that was very important.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) we all thought it was a chilling point, the hate, that she actually had to shoot Beau in the mouth. After she shot him on the road, then she went home and shot him back at home after he was already dead. So I`m sure that everybody on the jury -- that was a big point of our discussion, trying to convince ourselves that we were making the right -- the right verdict.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was an incident a few days prior, involving Calyx Schenecker. She driving her vehicle, and her mother was in the front passenger seat. Calyx went inside a grocery store to get some items. When she returned, Julie Schenecker attempted to look in the bag, and Calyx Schenecker stopped her. At that moment, Calyx made some statements, and her mother became upset and ended up backhanding her in the mouth three times.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Beau was in the car with you?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. And Beau was smarting off to you?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. And then where did -- did you shoot Beau?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With that .38?
SCHENECKER: In the side of the head.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.
SCHENECKER: And then I did his mouth, too.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, you shot him twice in the head?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.
SCHENECKER: Because they`re too sassy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: When asked why she shot her children, she simply stated, They got mouthy. Cops came to the home -- it`s a million-dollar mansion -- to find Calyx dead, a pool of blood surrounding her computer. She`s a straight-A student, doing her homework. The child had been dragged from the computer dead to the bed. The blood trail shows that, with the bulk of the blood under the computer table. She had been shot twice, once in the mouth area, once behind the head.
Beau, the younger brother, was shot dead still strapped into the family minivan. It was a soccer day.
Police find the bodies, and then they find Mommy lounging by the luxury pool in the back yard, reading an article, "Eight Ways to Happiness." She reeked of alcohol and quickly explained that the reason she shot her children is because they were sassy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A New Tampa mother charged with killing her 16- year-old daughter, Calyx, and 13-year-old son, Beau, shooting each with a handgun she had purchased just days before, fed up, she told detectives, with her children being, quote, "mouthy" and misbehaving.
GRACE: Listen to this!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell us what happened yesterday.
SCHENECKER: I think it was the thing -- the thing that -- I just toppled over, the last straw. My daughter, my 16-year-old, was just mouthy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.
SCHENECKER: And it`s ridiculous.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.
SCHENECKER: She calls me names.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What kind of names does she call you?
SCHENECKER: Stupid. I forgot to get the mail yesterday...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You forgot to get the mail? What happened?
SCHENECKER: She got a lot of mail.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your daughter did?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What kind of mail did she have? Do you remember?
SCHENECKER: She didn`t show it to me. But that`s OK because I knew we were committing suicide.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You knew you were coming to what?
SCHENECKER: I knew we were committing suicide because she`s been so bad, snotty and nasty. But I try not to say anything or I just cry.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know what the difference between suicide and homicide is?
SCHENECKER: Suicide is killing yourself. Homicide is when you kill someone else.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.
GRACE: With me is special guest Gerry Tanso, owner of Lock `n Load, who sold the gun to Julie Schenecker. Gerry, thank you for being with us.
GERRY TANSO, GUN SHOP OWNER (via telephone): Thank you. Appreciate it.
GRACE: Did you ever imagine that you were going to get sucked into a murder trial?
TANSO: Not in a lifetime.
(LAUGHTER)
GRACE: Gerry Tanso with me, owner of Lock `n Load. Tell me about your interaction with Julie Schenecker.
SCHENECKER: She was an average person, easygoing, very nice, smiling, happy, and just a normal -- normal customer for us, anyways, you know?
GRACE: You said that she seemed normal, happy, everything was fine. Did she tell you why she felt she needed a gun?
TANSO: She said she needed a weapon because there was some crime in her neighborhood, and that was good enough for us.
GRACE: What crime of that? What crime was that? A kid TP`d another yard? What was the crime? Why did she think she needed a gun?
TANSO: Because there was crime in her neighborhood, in the neighborhood that she lived in.
GRACE: Now, were Julie Schenecker`s hands shaking when she came into the store?
TANSO: Was she -- what was that again?
GRACE: Was she shaking? Because when we see video of her coming out of the house when she`s arrested, she`s convulsing like she`s sick...
TANSO: No, she had a very slight shake in one of her hands, but that`s normal with a lot of people that come to the shop. A lot of older people shake. I mean, nothing to be alarmed about, you know?
GRACE: So when you sold Julie Schenecker the murder weapon, did you have any reason to believe she had a mental illness, that she was insane, that she was drunk or high, any reason you felt you should not sell her a gun?
TANSO: Not at all. Not at all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: The testimony of the gun shop owner becomes critical. I spoke to him at length, and he advised that Julie Schenecker was not only coherent and sane but polite, jovial, friendly, even giddy-acting buying her first gun. She was excited about the gun, shaking his hand before she left, even concocting a reason as to why she needed a gun, to protect her from home invasions in the area. It was a huge lie.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look at the defendant`s appearance. She`s smiling. She`s happy that she`s been able to buy this gun so she can implement her plan, I suggest to you. And remember that -- that that writing I showed you in the journal when I first addressed you earlier today, where she indicated she couldn`t wait five days. She wanted to do it tonight. And this demonstrates she, I suggest to you, her appearance and the witnesses describe, that she was happy with the prospect of having the ability to buy that gun to carry out her plan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: And just as we observe her in the courtroom not shaking, having tremors, same way at the gun shop. She was absolutely stable. She was fine. The fact that in order to get back to her -- get back at her husband, she tries to arrange a smile on Calyx`s dead face so her husband would find her that way, the fact that when she spoke to police she knew full well the difference between homicide and suicide. She knew what she had done. She repeatedly stated she shot them because they were mouthy to her.
Also just before the shooting, she had been in rehab. The rehab was not for mental illness, it was for drinking and prescription drugs. She had been diagnosed as being depressed. There was suggestion that she had been bipolar in the past. But that was it. Voluntary use of drugs and alcohol does not equal insanity.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Take a listen to what happened in court. Is this Julie Schenecker trying to get it over on the judge? Well, it didn`t work.
SCHENECKER: (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ma`am, that`s not -- that`s not the inquiry, and we`re not going to, respectfully, play that game.
SCHENECKER: I`m not playing a game, your honor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No...
SCHENECKER: (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Counsel, you need to take more time with your client because...
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can have a seat. I want you to take more time.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know where they`re at right now?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell me where.
SCHENECKER: Beau`s in the van.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, and where is your daughter?
SCHENECKER: In the bedroom.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where at?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: The conversation that then ensues with Julie Schenecker is caught on tape.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCHENECKER: The last straw (INAUDIBLE) my 16-year-old is just mouthy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why did you want to shoot her in the mouth?
SCHENECKER: Because it angers me so much.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her mouth angers you?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: That audio is damning. She doesn`t sound crazy. She doesn`t sound insane. She doesn`t sound incoherent. She sounds like she might be drunk, but she clearly can give the definition of homicide versus suicide to police and outline exactly what had happened. In fact, in one spot, she says, "I hope they`re dead."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know what kind of condition they`re in?
SCHENECKER: They`re a mess.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They`re a mess? Are they alive or dead?
SCHENECKER: I don`t know.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you think?
SCHENECKER: I hope so.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You hope what?
SCHENECKER: I hope they`re dead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You hope they`re dead?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCHENECKER: I know my children are in heaven! I want people to try to find comfort in believing, as I do, that they are in no pain, and they are alive.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: She states that Beau, her little boy, was sitting there in the minivan, strapped in, with his face blown up. Those are her words, not mine.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You parked the van, and then what happened?
SCHENECKER: Inside the garage...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right. And then what happened after that?
SCHENECKER: He was sitting there with his face blown up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: She goes on to state that shooting Beau was better, better than using carbon monoxide to kill him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCHENECKER: With Beau on the way to...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the way to what?
SCHENECKER: Practice.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Which practice?
SCHENECKER: Soccer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was going to soccer?
SCHENECKER: Uh-huh.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Tell me what happened. What happened on the way?
SCHENECKER: About halfway, I pulled out the gun, and he started yelling at me. (INAUDIBLE) Beau was always good. I hated shooting him, but it`s better.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You hated shooting him?
SCHENECKER: I hated it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why is it better?
SCHENECKER: Better than what?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You said, "But it`s better."
SCHENECKER: Yes. It`s better than carbon monoxide.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: She goes on to state that she loved her children until they were 6.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCHENECKER: I -- I think I was never happy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even when your kids were younger, you were never happy?
SCHENECKER: Oh, yes. Forgive me. I loved them when they were birth through age 6.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That`s when they start getting smart-mouthed, isn`t it.
SCHENECKER: No, they didn`t. They were mean.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Many people expected at the outset that Parker Schenecker would support his wife. Not at all. I think that he had seen her treatment of the children in the months leading up to the shootings and chose to side with his dead children.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This defendant wheeled her daughter in the chair into her room and left her in a bed covered up -- this is Calyx Schenecker uncovered -- left her in that bed intending, hoping that her husband, Parker Schenecker, finds her body, finds the results of the act that this defendant later described as horrible, the worst thing she`d ever done, left for Parker Schenecker to see the Saturday massacre committed on a Thursday that this defendant had planned.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: The fact that the children had complained to him about their mom is probably devastating, in his mind. There`s the whole survivor guilt aspect of Parker Schenecker`s testimony. His children had been telling him for a long time about their mother`s erratic behavior. He had taken a step to contact family members to check on Julie Schenecker, to help her.
And I`m sure there`s a part of him that blames himself for this. This is not his fault. This is not his fault at all. This is Julie Schenecker`s fault. He couldn`t possibly foresee that she would do such a thing to her own children.
I found it very interesting in court, in closing arguments, that the defense practically, for all practical purposes, blamed Parker Schenecker for this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi, my wife, she`s suicidal. And I`m going to the Rose Bowl. I hope she doesn`t have enough energy to commit suicide.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: They tried to give a disclaimer -- We`re not blaming Parker Schenecker -- but they did. They did try to blame Parker Schenecker for this, and I find that to be an offense in itself. This father did all he could for his children while holding down a very demanding full-time job, thinking she could take care of the home while he`s away. It didn`t happen that way. And to blame him now, when he has been the victim of the most horrendous crime, the murders of his children, I think is horrific.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What you`re going to hear is that he basically tells her, you know, Put that away. You know, Put that away, or I`m going to punch you. And before she can basically -- before she puts away -- she`s driving, Beau Schenecker is to her right -- she points it at his head -- bang. She shoots him in the left side of his head, shoots him dead at close range.
What you`re going to hear is she then turns her car around, and she drives home. You`re going to hear that she parks her car, her minivan, in the garage, closes the garage doors. And at that point, she takes her gun, bam, shoots her son a second time in the face area or on the upper lip, the mouth, the mouth that was disrespecting her, as well, the sassy mouth, as she called it.
Her son is dead in the car. She gets out of her minivan and basically walks into interest her house. And at some point, she goes upstairs, where her daughter, Calyx, is working on the computer. And what you`re going to hear is that she walks up close behind her, and Calyx says, What are you doing? And the defendant basically responds, Just seeing what you`re doing.
She raises the gun up -- bam -- shoots her in the back of the head. And Calyx Schenecker`s body falls to the left in her chair, blood pouring out of her head, blood onto the floor. And what you`re going to hear is that the defendant then shoots her in her mouth -- bam! -- the sassy mouth, as the defendant called it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: I want to find out, in your mind, what was the most powerful evidence for the state.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The journal. I mean, there`s no doubt about it, the journal is what is what sealed it.
GRACE: Which part of it? You know, because the part where she is talking about, The evil will begin -- and she names the date of the murders -- The evil will begin on Thursday. I mean, it was so obviously planned out, if you read her journals.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, if you go back before that, she planned on a Saturday massacre, which she put in her journal. And she didn`t know there was a three-day wait on gun laws. So she was hoping to get a gun that day. I mean, if you look at it, the whole time she was wanting to hurt Parker Schenecker. And my heart and every juror`s heart goes out to Parker.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Another thing I noticed in the courtroom was that never, not even once, did Julie Schenecker look back at her husband, nor did he ever look over at her.
The state has met and gone beyond its burden of proving murder one, premeditated murder simply in the video they showed the jury of Julie Schenecker going to buy the gun, totally coherent, shakes the hand of the gun shop owner, has social niceties like, How are you, Thank you very much, even has the wherewithal to lie to the gun shop owner as to why she thinks she needs a gun to protect herself from home invasions that are now rampant in her neighborhood.
I mean, this neighborhood has multi-million-dollar homes in it. There`s not home invasions going on in her neighborhood. But she has the wherewithal, the cunning, to create this facade story to the gun store owner. She doesn`t even need a story, but that`s the story she tells.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So when you bought that gun Saturday at the gun store, they wouldn`t let you take it right then, you had to wait the three days?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But you bought it that Saturday because you were going commit suicide and -- and your kids were being disrespectful?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. So basically, it was all planned out, though, right?
SCHENECKER: Oh, yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Then she writes how disappointed and angry she is that it won`t be a Saturday massacre, like she`s planned, because in Florida, you have a cooling-off period, a waiting period from the time you purchase the gun to the time you get to take possession of the gun. She didn`t know that. So that threw off her plan to murder her children by three or four days. She was angry about that, disappointed about that.
That is premeditation. She writes before the murders that she was disappointed she had to wait to kill her children. She writes, The evil will begin Thursday, the day of the murders. She went through a lot to stage the murders, to buy the weapon, to get the children unawares, and then to cover her tracks with the car pool, to shoo them away, to not answer the phone when someone called.
She did not want to be discovered. She was lounging by the pool, preparing a clean-up, I suppose. Little known to her, her mother would call police and ask for a welfare check.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you explain how you would get this gun ready to fire?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. If the cylinder was closed, I would then release the cylinder by the latch, open it, open the cylinder up, load the cartridges.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bam! Bam!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Back to the argument that she snapped. Let me remind all of you legal eagles that voluntary use of drugs or alcohol is not a defense, OK? She was not prescribed to be taking all of these pills. She had gotten herself addicted to painkillers and alcohol. That is not an emotional defense. That`s not a defect or a mental defect. That does not rise to insanity.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. I mean, do -- how are you feeling now? Do you need -- you think you need some medical help to get squared away? I mean, you`re shaking a little bit, but you and I are talking a lot better than we were earlier. I mean, you seem like you`re feeling better. Are you feeling better?
SCHENECKER: It goes back and forth.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. But you seem like you`re talking a lot better now. Are you feeling a little bit better now?
SCHENECKER: No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But physically, you seem like you`re more alert now than you were -- you starting to feel a little more alert now?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. All right.
SCHENECKER: But I don`t know what medicine -- oh, Klonopin. That helps the anxiety.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Klonopin for anxiety?
SCHENECKER: Uh-huh.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you take a lot of medications, though, right?
SCHENECKER: Oh, 10 or 12.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 10 or 12 meds. But you had been taking your medication, though, right? I mean, there was nothing you weren`t taking, right?
SCHENECKER: No. Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, you`ve been taking your medications?
SCHENECKER: Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Under our law, insanity is that you do not know right from wrong at the time of the incident, at the time of the shooting. But she knew to lie when she bought the gun. She planned to buy the gun. She tried to throw off the carpool so they wouldn`t come in. There are so many signs of premeditation in this case, which makes it even more heartbreaking.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Supreme Court has ruled that a person who is convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death cannot have the death penalty imposed against them because of their mental illness. In fact, there`s some great cases out there that says you`ve actually got to get them sane before you can execute them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: In most jurisdictions, there is a difference between being insane or mentally ill. With insane, if you are insane at the time of the incident, you are not guilty by reason of insanity.
Now, in our jurisprudence, insanity means you don`t know the between right and wrong at the time of the incident, not when you`re arrested, not at the time of trial. At the time of the incident, did you know what you were doing was wrong? The fact that she planned it, that she lied about it, tried to conceal it, shows she knew it was wrong.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PARKER SCHENECKER: The most important thing in all of this is Calyx and Beau, my lovely children, my smart, beautiful, loved and missed daughter and son. Giving voice to them has been my priority throughout this entire process, and their voices have been heard.
GRACE: Julie Schenecker has been found guilty on two counts of murder one. That is a mandatory sentence of life behind bars without parole in Florida. There was an enhancement of 25 years additional on each count when there is violence committed with a gun. Those sentences went down, as well, the defense begging the judge to put off the sentencing -- Put it off so we can confer, so we can talk. No! The judge went straight to sentencing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Almost too much for most to comprehend what brings us here. And regrettably, there`s nothing this court can say or do that`s going to bring comfort to all those that have been touched by this tragedy.
Ms. Schenecker, as the law requires, as to count one, for the first degree premeditated murder of Beau Schenecker, you`re adjudicated guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for life, and you shall not be eligible for parole.
GRACE: Schenecker handcuffed immediately upon that guilty verdict and then sentenced, with a bizarre rambling and incoherent -- well, actually, coherent but still bizarre and rambling statement that she gave, apologizing to aunts, uncles, coaches, people she didn`t even know, for her actions.
SCHENECKER: I accept your sentence! I apologize! I apologize to everybody in this courtroom (INAUDIBLE) have broken their lives! I have destroyed! I hope they can collect themselves as best as possible!
PARKER SCHENECKER: And while this decision doesn`t bring my children back, it does give our family an opportunity to move forward and honor their memory with the important work we`ve been doing with Calyx and Beau Schenecker Memorial Fund and remembering how they lived. Thank you.
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