Blogger's Daughter Sentenced to Life for His Murder

HOWARD COUNTY, MD – Sentencing an Ellicott City teen who plotted her father’s murder was one of the hardest decisions a Howard County judge said he’s had to make.

On Wednesday, 17-year-old Morgan Lane Arnold was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder, the state’s attorney’s office reported; her entire sentence was suspended, except for 30 years.

Howard County Circuit Court Judge William V. Tucker said that her sentencing was “one of the most difficult decisions the court has ever had to make,” according to the report. The ruling came after nine hours of hearings that included victim impact statements and testimony from doctors who could not agree on Lane’s mental prognosis.

Arnold pleaded guilty in the murder of her father Dennis Lane, a blogger and commercial real estate broker who was stabbed to death in his Ellicott City home on May 10, 2013.

Lane penned the blog “Tales of Two Cities,” chronicling Ellicott City (where he lived) and Columbia (where he grew up in Bryant Woods).

Police said Arnold, at age 14, and her then boyfriend, Jason Bulmer, who was 19 at the time, plotted for more than two months to kill Lane and his fiancée.

Arnold “thought her father was the bane of her existence,” Tucker said.

Both Arnold and Bulmer have been incarcerated since the crime occurred.

Bulmer was sentenced to 30 years in July 2014, and he said that Arnold told him to kill her father, supported by messages the couple exchanged between January and May.

Judge Tucker reportedly read more than 2,000 pages of their messages, including plans that led up to Lane’s murder at 4:20 a.m. on May 10, 2013.

”It was Morgan Arnold who made this happen,” Tucker reportedly said in court. “It was Morgan Arnold who manipulated Mr. Bulmer.”

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Arnold allegedly asked Bulmer to kill Lane’s fiancee, Denise Geiger, as well. Geiger, who was in the home at the time, called 911.

During the two days of testimony preceding Wednesday’s sentencing, the court heard victim impact statements from Geiger and Dennis Lane’s sisters, according to a report from the state’s attorney.

When Arnold is released, she is to be on probation for five years, including no contact with Geiger, Geiger’s daughter, the Lane family and Bulmer.

Before sentencing, there was also testimony from mental and behavioral specialists, who could not reach consensus on Arnold’s mental and emotional conditions. In a previously court-commissioned study of Arnold’s mental health, five experts gave five different diagnoses, from Asperger’s to ADHD to depression.

Said Judge Tucker: “As she gets older, it is my hope that she appreciates what she has lost...”