Who Is Sara Packer? New Details About The Mom Who Plotted Her Adopted Daughter's Rape And Death
She plotted to kill her 14-year-old daughter Grace Packer.
getty A Pennsylvania woman recently told an open court about the brutal murder of her adopted 14-year-old daughter that she participated in with her ex-boyfriend.
During the trial for Jacob Sullivan, 46, — who pleaded guilty last month to the 2016 abuse, rape and murder of Grace Packer — Sara Packer, 44, testified that they committed the crime together as a part of a "rape-murder fantasy."
She agreed to testify against her ex as part of a plea deal. Sara Packer will spend life in prison after she pleads guilty. That will happen after a jury decides if Sullivan will also spend life behind bars or if he will be sentenced to death.
Sara Packer claims that she fell victim to his fantasy, while Sullivan's defense attorneys say that Packer was the one who controlled the relationship.
So who is Sara Packer? Here's everything we know.
1. She said she didn't want her adopted daughter to die.
According to Packer, she and Sullivan originally intended to keep Grace in the attic "for years" so he could be available for him to rape at will. She described the child as a "nonentity" and said that she wanted her to go away but that "she didn't have to die."
"The reality of what he had done set in and there was no going back," she said. "So, he decided it was time for her to die…I got wrapped up in Jake’s fantasy, and I didn’t think I could tell him no without losing him.”
2. Grace looked to her adoptive mother for help during the attack.
The night before the teen was killed, Sullivan and Sara Packer drove her to a home in Quakertown. Sullivan then punched her in the face and raped her while her adoptive mother watched.
According to Sara Packer, Grace looked to her for help.
“I can’t help you anymore," she said she told Grace. "This is now your life.”
3. They left her to die.
After Sullivan had sexually assaulted Grace, the couple bound her with zip ties, drugged her and put a ball gag in her mouth before leaving her in an attic closet to die. However, the next day they returned to find her alive and that the zip ties had snapped.
So Sullivan grabbed her from behind and put her in a chokehold. Sara Packer said she told the teen: "Just go, honey, just go."
She also said she held Grace's hand and told her it was okay to die.
“I took her hand and told her it was OK to go,” Packer said court. “It seemed like it took forever, but it was only a couple minutes.”
4. They stored her body in cat litter.
Sullivan and Packer stored the teen's body in cat litter, which was supposedly Packer's idea. They kept the body in a cardboard box in the attic for three months until they later purchased a bow saw.
Packer testified that they dismembered Grace's body in their bathroom and then dumped it 75 miles away in the woods.
5. Did Packer control Sullivan?
According to psychologist Dr. Frank Dattilio, Sullivan only raped Grace because he wanted to please Packer.
“The worst was brought out of him, I believe, by this relationship,” Dattilio said in court. “It became a slippery slope.”
Dr. Dattilio also said that Sullivan was sexually abused as a child and that he was interested in deviant sex at an early age, due to growing up in a home where "strange and erotic sex" was acceptable and the "traditional boundaries in regards to sexual relations did not apply.”
He met Packer in 2013, after his marriage broke up because he wanted multiple partners and his ex-wife didn't.
“He liked her because she was very intelligent and took control of the relationship, which is what he wanted,” Dattilio said. "She was very smooth in her way of dealing with him,” Dattilio told the jury. “She could manipulate him. If she threw out a fantasy, he would do whatever he could to follow it.”
Emily Blackwood is a writer and editor living in California. She covers all things news, pop culture, and true crime.