It leaves you with shudders down your spine.
Susanna Reid’s new ITV documentary Children Who Kill airs tonight, looking at the cases of two adolescents who received life without parole in America for murder.
One of the cases the programme explores is that of Morgan Leppert, who was 15 when she committed her crime and is currently seeking to get her sentence overturned.
Leppert and her then-boyfriend Toby Lee Lowry were convicted of the murder of James Stewart, 62.
Stewart was found lying on the floor of his Florida. He was stabbed multiple times with metal rods and a knife at his home, before being suffocated with a plastic bag – with the pair claiming he was killed as they wanted to steal his car.
In the police tapes, she tells the police: “[My boyfriend] told me to stab him… I poked him, it didn’t even go through for god’s sake.”
Speaking now, she claims that she will commit suicide if she is not given the chance to leave prison.
“I’ll probably kill myself, honestly. No hope…” Leppert trails off, as a slight smile comes across her face. “I would end it. And it sucks, and it’s sad, but it’s true.”
She is now angry with her former boyfriend, who was 22 at the time of the crime, as he avoided the death sentence by testifying against her.
“It was a dream, it was every girl’s dream – I thought I had the perfect boyfriend,” Leppert says. “But he turned out to be the monster who took my life away.”
The programme aims to explore whether child killers should be given a second chance, due to their age when they committed their crimes.
