No Regrets For Mom Who Killed Her 2 Kids

The New Tampa military mom convicted last May in the shooting deaths of her two children is speaking out for the first time since her trial.

Julie Schenecker, 54, says she has no regrets over actions she took in January 2011. Those actions left her son, Beau, 13, and daughter, Calyx, 16, dead. The crime rocked not only the Tampa Bay area, but also made national headlines as people sought to understand just what happened in the Schenecker home that January day.

While prosecutors used Schenecker’s own notebook to paint a picture of premediated murder, Schenecker told ABC news recently she was only initially planning to kill herself.

Her notebook told another story to jurors who convicted her of first-degree murder and sentenced her to life in prison. In her notebook, she wrote, “I was planning on a Saturday massacre,” The Tampa Bay Times reported. That ‘Saturday massacre’ was sidelined due to the state’s mandatory three-day waiting period.

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When Schenecker was able to obtain a gun, she shot and killed Beau while he was sitting in the family’s car, still strapped in a seatbelt.

Beau, Schenecker told ABC, did see the gun before the fatal shot was fired.

Daughter Calyx, however, did not and was shot in the head while doing homework.

When asked about the reasons behind the murders, Schenecker said she would do it again and had no regrets.

“I saved them,” she said, alleging Beau was sexually molested and that she was protecting Calyx from rape.

While it was Schenecker’s own lawyers who helped take the death penalty off the table in last year’s trial, Julie did tell ABC she regrets that decision.

“I wanted the death penalty,” she said.

Schenecker’s then husband, Army Col. Parker Schenecker, was on active duty at the time of the shootings. In the years since his children’s deaths, Parker Schenecker has established the Calyx and Beau Schenecker Memorial Fund to benefit Tampa Bay area teenagers. GrillSmith restaurants have worked in close partnership with Parker to raise money for the scholarship fund.

Calyx attended King High School while Beau was a student at Liberty Middle School.

Parker Schenecker has vowed to “remember how my children lived.”

To learn more about the memorial fund, visit its Facebook page.

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