For over a year, Sara Packer and her boyfriend Jacob Sullivan had been planning to live out a rape and murder fantasy the couple had shared together. Their target would be Packer’s own adopted daughter, 14-year-old Gracy Packer.
In July in 2015 Grace had returned home from staying with relatives in North Carolina. On July 8, 2016, Packer and Sullivan took Grace to a home in Richland Township, Pennsylvania. There, Sullivan punched Grace several times in the face and dragged her up to the third floor of the home. He raped and beat the girl for hours while Packer watched. Packer left and returned with a bottle of Tylenol PM. They convinced the teen to take more than the recommended amount of the pills and then left her bound in the hot attic of the home to die.
Packer and Sullivan returned to the home the following morning, suspecting that Packer’s daughter was dead. They were surprised to see that she was still holding on to life. Sullivan strangled and suffocated her until she died. They then placed Grace’s body into cat litter in order to preserve it.
Three days later the couple filed a missing persons report on Grace. The body was left in the couple’s attic for four months. Packer and Sullivan later dismembered Grace’s body and move her into the woods where she was found by hunters in October of 2016.
As investigators started closing in on Packer and Sullivan, they both took an overdose of pills as part of a suicide pact. The couple had been found unresponsive by another woman who had lived with them and they were transported to the hospital. While both were recovering, they admitted that they had killed Grace as part of a sexual fantasy they shared and told investigators that they had continued to collect social security checks on Grace’s behalf even after they knew they had killed her.
A trial is still underway for Packer and Sullivan. Bucks County District Attorney Matthew D. Weintraub told reporters that Grace “…never had a chance with these people,” going on to say, “The question is, ‘Who will speak for Grace Packer, this forgotten child?’ and the answer is, ‘We will.. . . We are not done.”