Grace Packer's Adoptive Mother Sentenced To Life In Prison

BUCKS COUNTY, PA — The adoptive mother of Grace Packer will spend life in prison for her role in the rape and murder of the teen, a Bucks County judge determined Friday. The sentencing of Sara Packer, 44, came one day after a jury decided her boyfriend Jacob Sullivan, 46, will face the death penalty.

Both pleaded guilty in the 2016 rape, murder and subsequent dismemberment of Grace.

“Since the day I heard about this case, one question played over and over in my mind: How could a parent do this?” Judge Diane E. Gibbons told Packer as she sentenced her to serve life plus 52 to 104 years. “You never were a parent to Grace Packer. You never wanted to be a parent to Grace Packer. The word ‘mother,’ out of your mouth, is a profanity.”

Coming at the conclusion of two-week death penalty proceedings, Sullivan's death sentence also included a consecutive 44 to 88 years in prison.

“There are no words for what you are, Mr. Sullivan. There are no words for what you did. There are no words for what you no doubt would continue to do if you were not apprehended,” Judge Gibbons told Sullivan on Thursday. “You have no soul.”

Neither defendant chose to speak at their sentencing. In their pleas, the couple admitted they had planned to kill Grace and agreed to act out a shared rape-murder fantasy with Packer’s adopted daughter as their victim.

They carried out their plan July 8, 2016 at a residence in Richland Township.

Sullivan told investigators Grace's death was something he and Packer plotted in late 2015. He told police he and Packer drove Grace from their residence in Abington to a new home in Richland Township.

After they entered the house, Sullivan told investigators he struck Grace several times in her face, splitting her lip, authorities said. The two adults then took the teen to the third floor of the residence, where Packer watched as Sullivan raped her daughter, prosecutors said.
Packer then allegedly left to buy Tylenol PM and other drugs to sedate her daughter. The adults then gave her an overdose of pills, then bound and gagged her and left her to die in the hot attic, prosecutors said.

When the pair returned the next day and Grace was still alive, prosecutors said Sullivan strangled and suffocated her, then packed Grace's body in cat litter to mask the odor and left it in the attic for three months.

Three days after the killing, Packer filed a missing person report with Abington Township Police, saying that her daughter had disappeared and likely had run away.

Authorities say Packer then allegedly withheld critical information and gave misleading statements to investigators working to find the teen, resulting in an arrest on charges of endangering the welfare of a child and obstructing the administration of law.

Two weeks before Grace's body was found with its arms and legs removed, Packer was captured on video buying a bow saw and two extra blades at a tractor supply store in Richland Township, the probable cause affidavit said.

A forensic anthropologist who examined the teen's body determined that the scarring and tool marks on her bones were made by an alternating tooth saw blade similar to that of the bow saw, authorities said.