Ohio Woman Sentenced to Life for Convincing 10 Year-Old Son to Murder Father

In one of the more bizarre and macabre cases in quote a while , a Defiance County, Ohio jury convicted Judith Hawkey for murder, and the judge sentenced her to life in prison without parole for the decade old murder of her former husband.  The Toledo Blade reports that Hawkey was defiant at the end, swearing to appeal.  Ten years ago, Hawkey’s adopted son, Corey Breininger (who was then 10 years-old) was questioned by sheriffs after he shot Hawkey’s then husband and the boy’s adopted father with a shotgun.  Corey said it was an accident when the father was teaching Corey how to clean the gun.  With that explanation, the case was closed. 

 

Judith Hawkey

Recently, however, Corey told a former teacher that it was all a lie and that he had been forced by his mother (who has since remarried) to kill his father for insurance money. The day after the father, Robert Breininger, was killed, Hawkey visited their insurance agent to collect a $500,000 insurance policy.  Corey also told of abuse at the hands of his mother including threats to cut off his penis, cutting of his genitals, and telling him his father was dying of brain cancer.

With Corey Breininger’s recent allegations, the case was reopened, and Hawkey was charged.  In court, Hawkey placed blame for the death solely on her son.  Her new husband defended her, saying that she had raised the boy for years afterward and he saw no signs of abuse. 

The judge and jury found otherwise.  The prosecutor argued that that Hawkey used her son as a weapon, arguing: “The manipulation, the physical, emotional abuse of that little boy created a situation that enabled this defendant to use him really as though she had walked into that room and pulled that trigger against Mr. Breininger’s head as surely as if she had done that herself.”

He said Hawkey had personal and financial motives for doing what she did, and he noted she was at the door of Mr. Breininger’s insurance carrier within 24 hours of his death.

The judge was more brutal in his assessment, explaining his sentence: “What it might be closest to is a murder for hire, which is a particularly egregious form of murder, but it’s worse than murder for hire,” the judge said. “If you hired a hit man — bad as that would be — this is worse.

“Twisting and manipulating a child to this end is evil beyond description,” Judge Schmenk said. “To be so cold-blooded, so calculating, and so manipulative to commit the ultimate crime by forcing a child to kill their parent defies description.”

Interestingly, while the shooting was originally considered an accident, according to the son’s story (which would have allowed the insurance policy, rather than murder which normally voids accidental death policies), Hawkey offered a different version of events, now blaming the son.  “We were sending him to a military school,” she told the court. “He did not want to go, and he shot his father purposely and made up this whole story.”  She apparently didn’t tell that to the Sheriff ten years ago.  That discrepancy, together with some physical evidence of old abuse, was apparently enough to do her in.

I wasn’t on the jury to hear the evidence.  But the discrepancy between the original explanation of the death as an accident (and collection of a large insurance policy) and new charges by the mother that the 10 year-old son was a homicidal maniac who would murder his father to avoid military school, are striking.  If the boy was so viscous that he’d murder his (adoptive) father, why didn’t the mother didn’t tell anyone that and then why did she introduce him into another household and another step/adoptive father.  That doesn’t add up.  It looks like a lie.  When a witness lies, the jury usually assumes they are a liar and will believe whatever plausible the other side says.  What it does add up to is an unbelievably evil woman who would, as the judge say, use a 10 year-old adopted son as an instrument of murder.  And that evil is almost indescribable.

Full story: http://www.toledoblade.com/Courts/2013/12/20/Woman-gets-life-term-for-husband-s-murder.html#PcvJmKKWusvbvlTz.99