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New Details of the Horrific Murder of 14 year Old Grace Parker

Yesterday at a pre-trial hearing in Doylestown, the request to try Sarah Parker and Jacob Sullivan together for the murder of Abington Junior High School student, Grace Parker, has been withdrawn. They will now be tried separately.

Going back to the murder that occurred in 2016. Grace Parker, was 14 years old at the time. She allegedly was raped, murdered and dismembered by her adopted mother, Sarah Parker and boyfriend, Jacob Sullivan. NBC 10 reported on January 9, 2017,  that “The girl’s torso was found by hunters in a Luzerne County park on Oct. 31, and K-9 teams found her legs and arms nearby”.  Bucks County prosecutors said the days and hours leading up to Grace’s killing “were probably the most horrible and traumatic that any person should ever have had to experience.”

The story gets worse. Grace was 3 years old, when Sarah Parker, a former adoption supervisor for the Northampton County, and her husband at the time, David Parker, adopted her. According to a Bucks County Times’  article in January of 2017, David Parker, Sarah’s now ex-husband, was criminally accused and later convicted in 2011 for sexually abusing Grace. The abuse allegedly began when Grace was just five years of age. David Parker is now registered as a sexual violent predator under Megans law.

Due to testimonies yesterday, Sarah Parker and Jacob Sullivan will now have separate trials. Prosecutors are alleging that Sullivan, a Horsham resident, admitted raping the girl, while Sara Packer watched in the attic. According to readingeagle.com , an Abington Hospital nurse who treated Sullivan after he was hospitalized on Dec. 29, 2016, for a drug overdose that prosecutors say was a suicide attempt, said that Sullivan admitted to the murder freely, without any prompting.

“He said he didn’t know why they were coming down so hard on Sara, because he was the one who killed Grace,” the nurse said. “They couldn’t handle her anymore, but they couldn’t just return her because they needed the money.” “He felt like he was in a dark place and always wanted to kill,” she added. Another nursing assistant who was assigned to supervise Sullivan due to his recent suicide attempt, also heard the confession.

Attorneys for Jacob Sullivan are requesting that those confessions be thrown out, claiming he was not mentally fit at the time. The judge is to rule later, on the defense’s request to bar prosecutors from using Sullivan’s statements.