Julie Schenecker, a 53-year-old military wife from Tampa, is awaiting trial for the 2011 shooting deaths of her two teenage children. As a recent CBS news article reported, the jurors in that case will likely hear large volumes of disturbing evidence from both sides. Schenecker was a devoted wife to a colonel and an attentive mother often cheered her kids on from the sidelines during soccer games. She bought a gun one week prior to the killings, and complained in a letter about the three day waiting period that just served to delay the inevitable murders of her 13-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter in January of 2011.
Two Sides
Two versions of the defendant will be presented according to these facts: one being an privileged soccer mom who calculated the murders of her two children before carrying them out, and the other being a mentally ill woman who suffered for years and failed to realize what she was doing when she shot her two children. Her attorneys are arguing a defense of insanity in the trial that is expected to start any day. If convicted, she could face life in prison without the possibility of parole. Even if she is found not guilty because of mental insanity, she could be committed to a mental facility where she will remain until no longer a threat to herself or others.