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Two 17-year-old girls have been sentenced for torturing and butchering an elderly woman, less than three weeks after a pair of 10-year-olds were charged with murdering a toddler. Again, a troubled nation is asking, how could this happen? Edna Phillips, 70, was throttled with her dog's leash and stabbed or slashed 86 times. The mental images of the crime have shocked the nation just as the video pictures of little James Bulger being led to his death did last month. http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/juvenile-criminals

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*Warning the content of this post may be disturbing * Back in 2004 a young man by the name. If Micheal Hernandez lured his good friend into a bathroom stall and proceeded to stab him to death andwashed  up and returned back to class with blood stained clothes once locked away they soon  found out he planned to kill his other good friend

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In October of 2014, a 10-year-old boy by the name of Tristin Kurilla, was charged as an adult with homicide and aggravated assault. Kurilla, angry that 90-year-old Helen Novak yelled at him, choked her with a cane and punched her in the throat and stomach, causing her death. Even though the boy confessed to the murder, the rulings of his case were being challenged. Since Kurilla was not represented by an attorney when he was questioned, he was asked to interview a second time, but his mother kept interfering. Because of this, the boys attorney's are trying to get the case transferred from adult to juvenile court due to his age and are possibly looking at custody until the age of 21. http://www.thedailybeast.com/10-year-old-murder-defendant-shows-failure-of-us-juvenile-justice-system
http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/confession-of-10-year-old-alleged-killer-will-likely-be-challenged-1.1772062

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In 1979, Brenda Spencer, who was 16 at the time, fired a .22 caliber rifle on an elementary school playground. Her reason for doing so was, "I don't like Mondays." Despite firing at a playground, only the school's principal and janitor were killed.

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Caleb Sharpe, age 15 attended Freeman high school in Washington. Sharpe attempted a mass shooting. His rifle got jammed as he attempted to load it, he then decided to use a pistol he brought instead. He shot one kid in the abdomen and then the head and killed the student. Then he walked through the halls and shot into classrooms wounding three girls. At the moment Sharpe is in custody until his case has been determined.

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SPOKANE, Wash. - A 15-year-old boy accused of killing a student at his rural Washington state high school and wounding three others has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder, according to court documents made public Tuesday.

Caleb Sharpe, a sophomore at Freeman High School near the small town of Rockford, Washington, entered the pleas last Friday, the documents said.

He made the appearance in juvenile court but authorities have the option of seeking to have him tried as an adult and Spokane County Sheriff Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich has said Sharpe should face adult charges.

Prosecutors filed a subpoena asking the high school to release Sharpe's transcripts, details of any disciplinary actions he has faced, any history of violent or disruptive behavior, truancy or drug or alcohol abuse.

The school with about 300 students is located near the Washington state border with Idaho. Classes were canceled last week after the shooting on Wednesday and resumed Monday.

Authorities said Sharpe brought a handgun and an assault rifle to school in a duffel bag he carried onto his high school bus.

The assault rifle jammed when he tried to load it inside the school and he pulled out a pistol and shot a 15-year-old classmate in the abdomen and face, killing him, court documents said.

The teen then walked down a hallway, firing at or into the ceiling and wounding three female students, authorities have said. Sharpe told police that he had been bullied by the boy who died but did not target him specifically.

Two of the wounded girls have been released from a Spokane hospital.

The Spokesman-Review newspaper reported last weekend that Sharpe had been suspended for bringing threatening notes to school and that the shooting happened on the first day he had returned.

Documents and his classmates said Sharpe brought notes to school about doing "something stupid," was obsessed with past school shootings and posted videos online that showed him playing with guns.

Sharpe also had been meeting with a school counselor because of suicidal thoughts and left a suicide note at home for his parents before the shooting, an investigator for the Spokane County Sheriff's Office wrote in an affidavit.

Sharpe has been in custody since the shootings.

His family last week issued a statement expressing condolences and asking for prayers for the victims and their relatives. Sharpe's parents and his lawyer were present during his court appearance.

The Associated Press doesn't typically name juvenile suspects but is doing so because of the severity of the accusations and because Sharpe's name was released in public documents.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Washington state school shooting suspect pleads not guilty

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SPOKANE, Wash. - A 15-year-old boy accused of killing a student at his rural Washington state high school and wounding three others has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder, according to court documents made public Tuesday.

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Andrew Golden,11, and Mitchell Johnson,13, were the masterminds behind the brutal murders of four students and one teacher, also leaving ten wounded at their Arkansas middle school. On the day of the shooting, the boys went to Andrews grandparent's house to stock up on guns and ammo. The boys strategically planned for Mitchell to be marked absent, but for Andrew to attend school so he could pull the fire alarm, and meet up with Mitchell after. When the students started evacuating the classroom, they were met by the two boys shooting at them. Police found them in the woods and they were tried as juveniles due to Arkansas law. The boys were held as juvenile delinquents until age eighteen and an addition three years for gun charges.

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Adam Lanza killed himself. So did Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech. And so did Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in Columbine. And Christopher Harper-Mercer in Roseburg. And Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista.

If you go down the list of mass shootings at U.S. schools, most of the killers turned the guns on themselves after killing classmates and teachers. Several others were killed by police, and a few were taken into custody alive.

But only two are now out of prison, one of whom was arrested with a gun after his release, while the other has since applied for a concealed carry permit.

Not only that, but because Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden were minors at the time of the 1998 shooting - 13 and 11, respectively - when they killed five people in what was then the second-deadliest U.S. school shooting, Arkansas state law mandated that they be released on their 21st birthdays, with their records sealed.

Little has been reported about the lives of Golden and Johnson since they were released in the mid-2000s, but they seem to have one thing in common: neither apparently swore off guns after their time in juvenile detention.

THE DAY TWO BOYS BECAME MASS SHOOTERS

Debbie Spencer was a science teacher at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, in 1998 and taught both Golden and Johnson. She said Johnson "was one of the most polite students I've ever had. Always 'Yes, ma'am, no ma'am,'" she told ABC.

On the other hand, she said, Golden was "sneaky."

"He would do enough to get by. I remember the conversation we had the day before [the shooting]. I was going over to see if they wanted to know what their grades were so far," Spencer said, remembering that Golden had just barely gotten a B.

"You just got by by the skin of your teeth, didn't you?" she recalled saying to him.

"And he said, 'Yup, I always do,'" she said.

"It gives me chills because he knew what he was going to do at this point," she said.

The two were reportedly planning a shooting and getaway, with news reports at the time detailing how Johnson took his parents' car and the boys broke into Golden's grandparents' home where his grandfather kept his guns unlocked. One of the pair then pulled the fire alarm at lunch and opened fire when people started to flee.

"They were hiding in bushes and shooting at us," Spencer said. "We didn't know what was going on. It was an ambush. It was chaos.

"I didn't even know it was that close to me until I was giving the police my statement and I saw, 'Oh look, there's a hole in my purse,'" she said.

Jonesboro was tied for the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history at the time, according to an ABC News analysis of FBI records.

Part of the reason it is not as well remembered today stems from a matter of timing, one expert says. Golden and Johnson didn't know it when they pulled their respective triggers, but little over a year later, a pair of teenage boys was going to open fire at their Colorado school in a horrific, deadly event that unfolded on live TV.

Journalist Dave Cullen spent nearly 10 years writing a book about that shooting at Columbine High School, and said the Jonesboro shooting and others contributed to Columbine's resonance.

"There had been the lead up to [Columbine] and the growing anxiety in the country about these school shootings," Cullen told ABC News. "If you had had Columbine out of the blue, it would have been horrifying but it would have seemed unique... it would seem more like a one off. The fact that it felt like part of a pattern is what made it much worse -- a pattern but taken to an extreme, way beyond our imagination."

In the subsequent 18 years after Jonesboro, the Westside Middle School shooting was knocked down from being tied for second to being locked in a five-way tie for ninth deadliest shooting in the nation, the ABC News analysis concludes.

Golden and Johnson are the only two U.S. mass school shooters from the past century who are alive and not incarcerated.

THE JUSTICE OF JUVENILES

In most mass killings, which the FBI defines as any incident in which three or more people are killed, the offenders put on trial are convicted of at least one charge of felony murder. Felons are barred from possessing firearms.

But in the case of the Westside Middle School shooters, they were tried as juveniles, which means they were technically found "delinquent" instead of "guilty," and even though they served time, they came out with sealed records.

Back on March 24, 1998, the pair got guns from Golden's grandfather's house, went to school, pulled the fire alarm after lunch and stood outside the door where they knew students would be fleeing. They opened fire, killing four students and a teacher, and injuring 10 others.

Less than 10 years later, both men were free.

The decision to charge the pair as juveniles was not really a decision at all, but the only option: At the time, Arkansas did not allow juveniles to be tried as adults. That law was changed a year after this case, the Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Research said.

Many specifics of their story after they were sentenced are hard to pin down because of state laws that protect both juvenile offenders and gun owners, or would-be owners. In Arkansas, the majority of juvenile cases are sealed, a Craighead County Court official told ABC News, so both court officials and lawyers involved with the cases are not only barred from revealing the details of the case but also from acknowledging the existence - or non-existence - of those cases in the first place.

According to John Smith, the chief deputy clerk for the Craighead County Circuit Court, there is a good chance Golden and Johnson's court records had been destroyed, and after a week of searching, he could not find the physical copies.

GUN POSSESSION AND FREEDOM

Arkansas also has a law that prevents anyone in the state police department from confirming the status of any conceal carry permit application, or the names of individuals who have or have not applied or were rejected. The law is relatively new, coming into effect in 2009, the Bureau of Legislative Research confirmed.

Before the law changed, however, Arkansas State Police spokesman Bill Sadler had confirmed to The Arkansas Times, based on the fingerprint needed to apply, that Golden had applied for the conceal carry permit in 2008 using the name Drew Douglas Grant. When ABC News asked last week, Sadler declined to comment because of the new law, but he did explain that sealed records show up in law enforcement background checks though not civilian ones like employer background checks.

According to The Arkansas Times' account, when Drew Douglas Grant applied for a concealed handgun carry license, he listed an address in Arkansas, about 70 miles northwest of Jonesboro. The paper reported that his application was denied because at least one answer - his address history - was proved false after not listing the juvenile detention facility or subsequent federal detention facility where he had lived for several years.

Even though he could only speak in hypotheticals, given the legal restrictions, Sadler said he was not surprised that Golden, by any name, would be rejected.

"When you commit a crime such as the one that was committed at Westside Middle School, and even if you change your name from what your name was at the time of the crime, you can't escape what the clerks knew," Sadler said of the clerks tasked with approving or denying conceal carry permits.

"Anybody who's changed their name, you can't change your fingerprints," he said.

Sadler said state law does not require an individual to register the specific handgun the applicant intends to conceal, and gun ownership is technically not a requirement for applicants. As a result, there is no way of checking whether Golden owned a gun. Sadler did not respond to the question of why someone would apply for a concealed carry license without owning or having ready access to a gun.

As for Johnson, he obtained a firearm at some point after his release. After a traffic stop in Arkansas in 2007, he was arrested for possessing a firearm in the presence of a controlled substance. The lawyer who represented him in that case, Jack Schisler, told ABC News that in more than 20 years of practicing law, he has never seen that charge used. When asked why that particular charge was used, Schisler said: "Because he's Mitchell Johnson, Jonesboro school shooter. That's my opinion."

"They were looking at the fact that because he was a juvenile when he got involved in the Jonesboro school shooting and, essentially, got out when he was 21 years old, that didn't sit well with a lot of people. And I think they thought this would be probably the most powerful charge," Schisler said.

While out on bond for that case, Johnson was arrested again in 2008. The Associated Press reported that Johnson admitted to taking a debit card left by a customer at the Arkansas gas station where Johnson was working. Johnson proceeded to use the card at the gas station and at a fast-food restaurant, and had marijuana on his person at the time of his arrest.

Johnson was sentenced to 12 years after being convicted in that 2008 incident and was to be eligible for parole in 2011, but then faced four more years for the earlier drug and weapons conviction from the traffic stop, the AP reported. Schisler confirmed the account. Court records show he was released in July 2015 into the custody of the U.S. Probation Office for the Southern District of Texas and placed in a drug rehabilitation program. The office did not respond to ABC News' multiple requests for comment.

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

Photos of Golden, who may or may not still go by his changed name, were released at the time of the shooting. His 11-year-old mug shot comes up readily in Internet searches.

ABC News contacted 10 phone numbers listed for various relatives of Golden. His grandmother declined to comment and three of his previous lawyers told ABC News that they had not spoken to him in years and did not have any way to contact him. Johnson's mother declined to comment when contacted and Johnson's father said they have been estranged for years and he has no idea where his son is now.

Science teacher Spencer said there had been speculation in Jonesboro that Golden started attending a local university after his release in May 2007. The registrar for the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville, which is about 60 miles west of Westside, confirmed to ABC News that an individual named Drew D. Grant attended the school from August 2007 until December 2009.

Johnson has a more recent mug shot floating around as a result of his subsequent arrests. On top of that, he was subject to a videotaped deposition in 2007 as part of the civil suit filed on behalf of the relatives of the victims. That taped deposition was released publicly, along with the transcript, but that wasn't the case with Golden.

Danny Glover represents Golden in the civil suit filed against the pair by the relatives of the victims. Glover told ABC News that while the suit is "still open, it's just been sitting there for decades - well, at least one decade."

The Craighead County Circuit Court clerk told ABC News that the latest action in the suit came in 2013 when Golden's grandfather was removed as a defendant in the suit because he died in 2012. When ABC News contacted Bobby McDaniel, the lawyer representing the victims' relatives in the suit to ask what was stalling the suit, he said it was the fact that Johnson was still in jail.

When told that Johnson was released in July, McDaniel said that he intends to "get a trial date so that we can obtain a moneyed judgment against both defendants for both compensatory and punitive damages. Punitive damages cannot be set aside in bankruptcy. I do not expect to collect these judgments but I want them hanging over their heads."

Glover confirmed that Golden was deposed as part of that suit but it was sealed by court order "because it had personal information about his whereabouts and identity that the court felt didn't need to be disclosed for his protection."

After the release of Johnson's deposition, Glover said Johnson received death threats.

"[Golden] changed his name at some point, so the court prevented the dissemination of that information and that was part of the court order," Glover said of Golden.

By contrast, in Arkansas, sex offenders are required to update the state either twice or four times a year with their addresses, vehicle information, physical characteristics, place of work, identifying codes for all of their electronic devices, and all of their email accounts and user names, according to Brad Cazort, the administrator of the repository division of the Arkansas Crime Information Center.

"I am very critical that our judicial system will allow mass murderers to live anywhere they want without their identities being known, their crimes known, or the families in those areas to be aware of who is living near them," McDaniel told ABC.

Both McDaniel and Mitch Wright, the husband of Westside teacher Shannon Wright, who was fatally shot in the back, say they believe the restrictions placed on these criminals pale in comparison to offenders who have not committed murder.

"I think that if a sex offender has to register as a sex offender, then I believe a person that's able to commit the crimes that were as bad as these were... then yes I do believe it's in the public's interest to know the name that he is going by," Wright, 50, told ABC News of Golden.

The privacy awarded the shooters because of their ages is understandable to some, though not necessarily appreciated. Spencer, the science teacher, said it seemed uneven that "they [the shooters] could find anything out they wanted to about us" but Golden and Johnson are "protected."

"They shouldn't have any rights. They shouldn't have the right to be out, to get a family, to have a gun and have a normal life like they didn't ever do anything wrong," she said.

Brandi Varner, whose 11-year-old sister Britthney was killed in the shooting, said that "every time of year around this time is a slap in the face" because she is reminded of the anniversary and that her sister's shooters are free.

"This guy is living the life that your sister dreamed of," said Varner, now 31, who was 14 at the time of the shooting.

SEARCH FOR ANSWERS

Videotaped confessions or manifestos released online have given subsequent shooters outlets to explain themselves and their actions, but such clarity was never available in the case of Jonesboro.

"I think [the deposition was] a matter of getting answers," lawyer Glover said. "The lawsuit is to get money to recover compensation for the victims, but I don't think anybody ever believed that there's going to be any great recovery."

In Johnson's deposition, he described Golden as being the one who initiated the shooting.

"He was, like, 'I've been thinking about doing some scaring of some people because I'm tired of them playing with me,'" Johnson said, according to an account of the deposition by The Arkansas Times.

For his part, Glover said Golden "seemed to be a fairly mild-mannered kind of young man."

"He had a good attitude," Glover said. "I think he regrets what happened and really can't explain what happened. Of course, he was 11 when it happened. ... At 11, it's hard to imagine why somebody would do that."

The public defender who represented Golden in the original juvenile case in state circuit court, Val Price, had no comment when asked by ABC News to describe Golden.

Wright, who was left to raise their toddler after his 32-year-old wife's death, said he wishes Golden and Johnson were still behind bars, "but I have reached a point in my life where it's in God's hands."

"Here's how I raised my son: He was two and a half and I could have raised my son in a home filled with hate and anger, and I could have let that hate and anger destroy him and me and destroy our souls, and that could have prevented us from ever seeing her again," Wright said.

"And what I told him was this: these two boys could truly repent and they can be forgiven for their sins and they could go to heaven and we could go to hell if we let this hate and anger eat us alive."

Science teacher Spencer said the search for answers used to "drive me crazy." The year after the shooting was the hardest, and not just because of timing but because she had Johnson's younger brother in her class that year.

"When his mother came for a parent-teacher conference, I just point-blank asked her. I said, 'I had a hole in my purse. Was he trying to shoot me too, because he shot two teachers?'" Spencer told ABC News.

"She said that Mitchell said that Andrew told Mitchell to shoot all the teachers."

While Johnson's mother declined to comment for this story, she did apologize as part of a town hall special ABC News hosted in 1999. Scott Johnson, Mitchell's father, told ABC last week that he has not spoken to his son since he was arrested in 2008 and was aware that he had been released but did not know where Mitchell was living now.

"I've kind of let it go," you know," Spencer said of the boys, "because I won't ever know and don't particularly want to see them and ask them."

ABC News' Lauren Pearle contributed to this report.

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The Only 2 Living US Mass School Shooters Not in Prison

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Adam Lanza killed himself. So did Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech. And so did Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in Columbine. And Christopher Harper-Mercer in Roseburg. And Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista. If you go down the list of mass shootings at U.S. schools, most of the killers turned the guns on...

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In February of 2009, 11-year-old Jordan Brown was accused of murdering his 8-month-pregnant step-mother Kenzie Houk. The murder victim's body was found by her youngest daughter of 4 years of age. Officials accused Jordan of the crime because he owned a 20-gauge shotgun and they found shotgun residue on his shirt. As Jordan's family was in denial of the judge's decision to try Jordan on the adult system, they created the Jordan Brown Trust Fund in order to raise money for his own defense. It was suspected that Jordan and Houk did not have the best relationship, and that Jordan envied her and her two daughters. Jordan is currently 19 years old and has been released from the Lawrence County Jail after spending seven years there. The case is still pending even though he has been released, as the court still believes he is responsible for the crime and he has not admitted himself to be guilty of the crime.

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Jordan Brown, now 12, awaits double-murder trial in Pennsylvania

Legal experts say he is among youngest murder defendants in country

Jordan's attorneys and friends have set up trust fund to raise money for defense

Prosecutors say they have a strong case, including physical evidence

(CNN) -- On a chilly morning in February 2009, state police found 26-year-old Kenzie Houk in her bed with a bullet though her head. She was eight months pregnant.

The search for her killer ended with the most surprising murder suspect residents of Wampum, Pennsylvania, had ever seen: 11-year-old Jordan Brown, the son of the victim's fiancé.

He is one of the youngest suspects in the country to be charged with homicide, legal experts say. There are two counts of homicide, one covering the fetus.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges in May.

In Pennsylvania, there is no lower limit for the age someone can be charged as an adult with criminal homicide. If convicted, Jordan, now 12, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The question of age is being raised in the Supreme Court this year where the practice of sentencing young people younger than 14 to life in prison without parole is being challenged.

After nearly a year of silence, Jordan's family, friends and attorney are bringing attention to the case as more court hearings loom. They say Jordan is innocent and should be tried in juvenile court. This month, they will launch the Jordan Brown Trust Fund to raise money for his defense.

A decertification hearing, at which Jordan's attorneys will ask the judge to move the case to the juvenile system, began this month. A decision on whether the case will be tried in the juvenile system or adult courts will likely be made in March, attorneys say.

The suspect's father has not publicly discussed the case, and CNN has been unable to reach him for comment.

"Our first step is decertification, because we feel like he is amenable to juvenile rehabilitation," said attorney Dennis Elisco of New Castle, Pennsylvania. "Not only do I know he's amenable, but I know he's innocent."

In almost half the states across the country, children can be prosecuted and tried in adult court, according to the University of Texas' Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Many of the laws passed were passed during a time when juvenile crime spiked in the 1980s and 1990s.

But sentencing experts say a majority of homicide cases involving children as young as Jordan are tried in juvenile courts, where the records remain sealed and sentences are less harsh.

At the time of the slaying, Jordan was a chubby fifth-grader with dark brown hair and an energetic smile. He liked riding bikes and reading Harry Potter books. Since the third grade, he played quarterback in his community's football league.

Family and friends describe him as an "all-American boy."

On weekends, Jordan hunted alongside his father, Chris Brown, who purchased the youth-sized 20-gauge shotgun state police believe was the murder weapon. The gun was given to Jordan as a present for Easter, and the boy's lawyers say he only used it for hunting.

Jordan's family friends say they never saw him exhibit any violent behavior. And he had no prior brushes with the law.

"He always got along with everybody, and he was always smiling," said Lonnie McConahy, 43, a co-trustee of the Jordan Brown Trust Fund. "It was always 'yes, sir' and 'no, ma'am.' "

After his arrest, Jordan was placed in the Lawrence Country Jail, a facility for adults. But authorities transferred him to a juvenile center in March after his attorneys argued that the adult jail couldn't accommodate an 11-year-old.

Most juveniles who enter the Edmund L. Thomas Adolescent Detention Center come and go within a few weeks. But Jordan has spent a birthday and Christmas there. He missed a much-anticipated fifth-grade overnight field trip to Gettysburg and didn't get to play his final year on the junior football league.

His attorneys say Jordan is still unable to grasp the magnitude of what is happening to him. He is doing well in counseling, his attorneys and family say.

Jordan's detention facility locker holds his books and board games. His school friends and football teammates shower him with letters, cards and magazines.

He is showing signs of reaching puberty. He has grown several inches and has gained about 20 pounds. He's starting to look like a teenager.

Although it is rare to charge someone so young as an adult in the United States, the prosecutor in the case says Pennsylvania law left him with little choice.

In the case of homicide, "my choice is either to charge him as an adult, or don't charge him," said John Bongivengo of the Lawrence County District Attorney's Office. "Not charging him at all wasn't feasible."

It also is rare for an 11-year-old to commit a violent crime. In his 30-year analysis of juvenile homicides, Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox found about 500 cases of children younger than 11 who were suspected of murder.

Brain science has been central to the debate on whether juveniles should be punished as adults. It's only in the past decade that there's been any significant scientific research on the adolescent brain. .

Laurence Steinberg of Temple University explained why juveniles lack control.

"The teenage brain is like a car with a good accelerator but a weak brake," wrote Steinberg, who is considered among the foremost experts in the field. "With powerful impulses under poor control, the likely result is a crash."

The U.S. Supreme Court took into account the growing body of adolescent brain research in 2005 when it banned the death penalty for juveniles.

"For all of the reasons the Supreme Court has rejected imposing the death penalty on children and all the new brain research, those reasons are magnified when thinking about a child as young as 11," said Marsha Levick, director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia.

Jordan's defense argues that there are no witnesses to connect him to the crime, but prosecutors are relying on the statements of the victim's oldest daughter, who was 7 at the time. She told authorities she heard a loud boom before leaving for school with Jordan.

That sound, prosecutors say, was the noise of a 20-gauge youth shotgun that state police believe is the weapon responsible for Houk's slaying.

But Jordan's attorneys say the witness, now 8, is unreliable because she didn't say she heard a "boom" the first two times police interrogated her. It wasn't until a third round of questioning that she told them about the noise.

The victim's body was discovered by her youngest daughter, just 4.

Prosecutors allege there was tension between Jordan and Houk, who had moved into the father's farmhouse. They say Jordan was jealous of Houk and her two daughters. The unborn child was a boy.

"There are no signs of forced entry," Bongivengo added. "No signs of a robber or burglar."

Jordan's supporters deny any rivalry or bad feelings between the boy and his would-be stepmother.

Prosecutors also allege that there is strong physical evidence linking Jordan to the crime. Police found gunshot residue on Jordan's shirt. A state trooper testified that the gun smelled like it had been freshly fired. His defense team argues that many of Jordan's shirts and guns had residue because he frequently hunted with his father.

Also, police said they discovered a blanket covering the gun with a quarter-sized hole burned into it.

With outcome of the decertification hearing still months away, there is little consolation for the victims' family.

The victim's family wants Jordan to be charged as an adult for taking two lives, they say.

They remember Kenzie Houk as beautiful, friendly and popular. Family members say they miss attending weekly bingo nights, cooking dinner and watching Steelers games with her.

"She'd give her last penny to everyone," said her mother, Debbie Houk. "She loved everyone and didn't have a mean bone in her body."

Debbie Houk, said she never expected to be a mother again. But after her daughter was slain, she now cares for her grandchildren.

"The day Kenzie was murdered, the whole family was served with a life sentence," she said. "There are a 4-year-old and 7-year-old who are serving life right now. They are never going to see their mom."

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Jordan Brown, now 12, awaits double-murder trial in Pennsylvania Legal experts say he is among youngest murder defendants in country Jordan's attorneys and friends have set up trust fund to raise money for defense Prosecutors say they have a strong case, including physical evidence (CNN) -- On a chilly morning in February 2009, state police found 26-year-old Kenzie Houk in her bed with a bullet though her head.

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Joshua Phillips age 14 at the time murders his 8 year old sister. He was swinging his baseball bat when he struck her against the head. Philips then decided the best method to get her to stop crying was to stab her in the neck. He then hid her body in his water bed for a whole week! Her body was discovered when his parents noticed a leak in the bed and decided to investigate the leak. They opened up the water bed to find her body where they called the police right away. Philips was charged with first degree murder and life in prison

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An Accident, or An Act of Evil?

"She Was a Little Girl Who Didn't Deserve to Die" ~Josh Phillips, 6 Years Later

It was November 3rd, 1998, when 8-year-old Maddie Clifton went missing in Jacksonville, Florida. When she was reported missing and police began searching for her, they started interviewing the neighbours. Almost immediately they had a neighbour in mind as a suspect. That neighbour had been arrested and charged more than 15 years earlier in two sexual battery cases, although both times the charges against him had been dropped.

As it turned out, their suspect was the wrong man, but her murderer was indeed a neighbour. Hundreds of people would volunteer in the search for Maddie, scouring the woods and dumpsters around the neighbourhood. The search for Maddie would end a week after she first disappeared, but it wasn't searchers or police who found her body. It was Melissa Phillips, 14-year-old Joshua Phillips mother, who found her. Thinking that her son's water bed appeared to be leaking, she went to inspect it, and found Maddie Clifton's corpse hidden underneath. She ran out of the house, and immediately went to the police.

She Was Hidden Under His Bed For a Week...

2003 CBS 48 Hours Special on Joshua Phillips

What Happened & Why?: "I Don't Know"

Josh Phillips was at school when the discovery was made, and that's where police arrested him. Everyone was completely shocked. The 14-year-old boy had absolutely no history of violence, and no one wanted to believe that he could be capable of murder, but he was.

Josh confessed to the police that he had murdered her, but it started off with an accident, he said. Josh claimed that they had been playing together, and he had panicked after he accidentally hit Maddie in the head with a baseball. He carried her into the house, brought her into his bedroom and put her on the floor, where she began to make noise and cry. He said he was afraid of his dad's reaction if he found Maddie in the house. He was scared, and he didn't want to get in trouble for hurting her, so in a panic, he beat her with a baseball bat, and stabbed her to keep her from screaming and crying. Police were able to retrieve both the bat and the knife used in the assault. He then hid her body under his bed.

When asked years later how he could go on with his life with her body hidden in his bedroom, he said that he even though he made no conscious decision to, he just ignored it. He was in denial and he couldn't believe in the reality of it, so he lived in a fantasy world, like nothing had happened.

When asked why this happened, Josh says he doesn't really know, even to this day. Phillips has stated that if he could take it all back, he would.

News Reports After Josh Was Convicted of Murder

Trial, Verdict, & Sentencing

Joshua Earl Patrick Phillips, at age of 15, was charged with first degree murder in the death of his 8-year-old neighbour and playmate, Madelyn Clifton. Due to the severity of the crime, he was charged and tried as an adult.

His trial was moved to a different county due to the flood of media coverage in the Jacksonville area. He was convicted of the first degree murder, and on August 20th, 1999, he was sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole. He was not eligible for the death penalty in Florida because he was under the age of 16 at the time of the crime.

Since the trial, Maddie's parents have divorced, and Josh's father has died in a car accident. Josh, on the other hand, has been in the appeal process. In 2002, an appeals court upheld his original conviction. In late 2004, his mother, Melissa Phillips, began seeking a new trial. She believed that his age at the time of the murder should be taken into account in regards to his sentence. In the meantime, two of the officials who were involved in his sentencing have said they are having second-thoughts. In 2005, new hearing dates were set for Josh Phillips. Their goal is to at least have the charges reduced to second degree murder, so that Josh might one day be eligible for parole.

Despite this, his case is still going through the appeal process, and at the age of 28, Joshua Phillip is still in prison serving his life sentence.

The U.S. Supreme Court made a ruling in 2012 that sentencing juveniles to a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole is unconstitutional. It is unknown at this point if Josh's lawyers will use this ruling to seek a new sentence.

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Murderous Children: Joshua Phillips (14) Murdered His 8-Year-Old Neighbour

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An Accident, or An Act of Evil? It was November 3rd, 1998, when 8-year-old Maddie Clifton went missing in Jacksonville, Florida. When she was reported missing and police began searching for her, they started interviewing the neighbours. Almost immediately they had a neighbour in mind as a suspect.

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