PHILADELPHIA _ Jacob Sullivan was sentenced to death Thursday for raping and murdering Abington teenager Grace Packer in 2016.
A Bucks County, Pa., jury of six men and six women handed down its decision around 10 a.m. after about 11 hours of deliberation. As the jurors were asked one by one whether they agreed on a death sentence, one man wept as he said, "I agree."
Several others wiped their eyes as the judge thanked them for their service.
"The butchery in this case was beyond my ability to describe," Judge Diane E. Gibbons said. "I'm sure it took a lot out of you."
The jurors had said Wednesday afternoon that they were deadlocked, but Gibbons instructed them to keep working. Had they not reached a unanimous decision, Sullivan would have been sentenced to life in prison.
Sullivan, 46, admitted last month that he kidnapped the 14-year-old, raped her, then choked her to death and stored her body in kitty litter until he and his girlfriend cut up the remains with a bow saw and disposed of them in the woods of Luzerne County.
He was handcuffed in the courtroom after the jury read the verdict, but showed no emotion. His relatives were not in the courtroom.
The formal sentencing was set to begin after a brief recess.
Sullivan will join 142 other inmates on Pennsylvania's death row. No one has been executed in the state since Gary Heidnik in 1999. Jurors were told not to consider the current moratorium on the death penalty and to assume that Sullivan would be executed if they sentenced him to death.
For the past week and a half, Sullivan listened from the defense table as attorneys argued over what sentence he deserved.
District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said Sullivan should be sentenced to death because he, not Packer, raped and killed Grace. But public defender Jack Fagan said Sullivan should be given the same punishment as Packer, who he said was the mastermind of the murder plot and will receive a life sentence as part of a deal with prosecutors.
Unshackled and dressed in plainclothes, Sullivan remained quiet for the most of the earlier proceedings, occasionally turning to talk to his attorneys and at times talking with relatives seated behind him.
He chose not to testify in his own defense, but Packer did, speaking publicly for the first time about how she and her boyfriend tortured and murdered her adopted child. She said the couple had originally planned to keep Grace alive in the attic, perhaps for years, for Sullivan to rape at will.
"Grace had become, for lack of a better word, a nonentity," Packer said. "I wanted her to go away."
For weeks, she and Sullivan planned Grace's torture. One July morning in 2016, they drove her from a home they rented in Abington to another they rented near Quakertown. There, Sullivan attacked Grace, punching her in the face as the girl looked to her mother for help.
Sullivan took Viagra, then raped the girl as Packer watched. Afterward, the couple drugged Grace, bound her wrists and ankles with zip ties, and put a ball gag in her mouth, leaving her to die inside a cedar closet in the hot attic. But when they returned the next morning, she was alive, having broken the ties and spit out the ball gag.
Sullivan then "panicked," Packer said, and choked Grace to death. They stored her body in kitty litter until October, when police showed up at the house to question them about Packer's report that Grace had gone missing.
Alarmed, Packer went out and bought a bow saw so she and Sullivan could dismember the body. After doing so, Sullivan and Packer drove 75 miles to a wooded area and dumped the remains, which were discovered by father-son hunters on Halloween.
As authorities ramped up their investigation, Sullivan and Packer attempted suicide, but survived. While recovering in the hospital, Sullivan confessed, telling hospital staff and later police that "Gracie was a nightmare."
He and Packer were arrested days later. They have been held in the Bucks County Correctional Facility ever since.
