16yo tells mother foolproof plan to escape justice for murdering a 2yo – problem was, the judge had been listening the whole time

In 2014, teenager Dylan Schumaker was standing trial for the murder of a two-year-old boy he had been babysitting. Facing the judge, the then 17-year-old cried his eyes out as he expressed how sorry he was, and how he didn’t mean to kill the child, but the judge knew much more than Schumaker then he was letting on and he wasn’t about to let this murderer off the hook.

The judge was pretty certain that those tears falling from Schumaker’s eyes were crocodile tears. He wasn’t sorry he’d killed toddler Austin Smith, he was sorry that he was about to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Dylan Schumaker was a master manipulator

Schumaker definitely had some nerve trying to pull on the judge’s heart strings. The year prior, when he was just 16-years-old, he had been left to watch over his girlfriend’s children. The teen lost his temper and reportedly beat the young Austin Smith over the head several times to get him to stop crying. He also muffled the boy’s face with a pillow in order to silence him according to BTPM.org.

Smith sadly died from injuries caused by the very person who was supposed to be caring for him. So who would ever feel sorry for someone who committed such a heinous crime? Even if Schumaker’s remorse was genuine, which he most certainly was not, it’s unlikely any judge or jury would have had much sympathy for him.

He thought he’d get away with it

Dylan Schumaker’s tears were not genuine in the slightest. As a matter of fact, they were all a part of his plan to win the favor of the judge and the rest of the court room. Speaking on the phone to his mother, Dylan had confidently told her that he believed he would be able to manipulate the jury by crying in front of them. 

Apparently Schumaker had not considered the fact that his phone calls would be monitored meaning the judge was able to listen to the full conversation and become fully aware of his plan to turn on the waterworks in the hopes that it would result in a lighter sentence for him. 

State Supreme Court Justice M. William Boller read the quote out loud to the court, “I am a 16-year-old blonde, probably all I have to do is cry in front of the jury and they’re going to feel sorry for me.” He then called Schumaker “a manipulator and deceiver,” before handing him his sentence. The 17-year-old was given 25 years to life in prison for the death of Austin Smith.