It’s one of the most horrifying and evil true crime stories of all time: A mother in Roanoke, Texas is brutally murdered by her teenagers over a weird love triangle involving a Satanic death pact. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare, and it became a reality for Susan Bailey in late September 2008.
There were four teenagers involved in the murder, including Susan Bailey’s own two children, Jennifer, 17, and David, 13. Then we have Jennifer’s boyfriend, Paul Henson, 16, and finally “Merrilee,” 14, who received immunity in exchange for cooperating with the police investigation (hence why we don’t know her name), and who was also dating Paul. How or why these teens came up with a murder plan to kill all their parents and run away to Canada to “live happily ever after” may never be adequately answered, but we do have facts.
We know that Susan Bailey worked two jobs to provide her two children with a good life. Unfortunately, all that time alone meant Jennifer and David were often unsupervised, and young David reportedly considered his older sister Jennifer more of a mother figure than his own mom.
Susan Bailey goes missing
Susan Bailey didn’t show up to work on Sept. 26, 2008, which was rare for her. Her co-workers called her mother, who Susan had listed as her emergency contact, to find out if she knew where Susan was. Susan’s mother was concerned, and called her house, but no one answered. She also couldn’t reach her grandchildren. She then called the Roanoke TX Police Dept., and they performed a welfare check on the house. No one was there, the car was gone, and there was no sign of a break-in, so they left.
The next day, there was still no word from Susan. Her mother called the police again, but with no reason to enter the house, they were unable to do anything. About two days later, a cop in Yankton, South Dakota spotted a car full of teenagers trying to get gas at 4 am. Because there were curfew laws for youths in Yankton, he stopped them and ran the plates. The car came back registered to a Susan Bailey, and none of the teens (Jennifer, her brother David, and Paul) had a drivers license. The cop called Roanoke police. Yankton, by the way, is about 700 miles north of Roanoke.
This incident gave the cops a reason to forcefully enter the Bailey home. Once inside, they recognized the unmistakable odor of a decaying dead body. What they saw was even worse.
The murder, and the murder scene
It was a ghastly scene. One officer described it as a “slaughterhouse.” Susan had been laying face down for at least a few days. There was blood on the walls, in the carpet, and on the doors. The murder struck law enforcement as exceptionally violent; there was blunt force trauma to Susan’s face from a baseball bat, and her throat was slashed from behind. Susan’s body also had 26 stab wounds, which authorities say the younger brother was responsible for. What’s even worse is there were other means of murder in the house as well.
Authorities found an upstairs bathtub full of water, with a frayed electrical cord hanging from the curtain. The teens had also disposed of their phones in the water. In the kitchen, they found a cup of pudding with crushed up Tylenol. It smelled like death and bleach in the house. Police later found video of David on his bike in Walmart, buying cleaning supplies.
Police investigate the teens’ relationships, their motives, and the occult aspect of the murder
Once authorities started investigating, they made some troubling discoveries. Suspects Jennifer Bailey and Paul Henson were dating, but Susan Bailey hadn’t liked Paul, and wanted her daughter to stop seeing him. Paul ran away from home on Sept. 23, and police showed up at Jennifer’s after his parents reported him missing. This caused a huge fight between Jennifer and her mom, who found bags full of knives hidden in the house. These same knives would soon be used to murder her.
Jennifer wanted to be with Paul, and Paul wanted to know what it was like to kill someone. There’s a twist here: The fourth teenager, Merrilee, was also dating Paul. But as she explained to police, she was dating “Talos,” Paul’s alter ego, whereas Jennifer was dating Paul. Paul somehow convinced both girls it wasn’t cheating, because each of them was in love with a different personality. From there, they became a threesome, with Paul reportedly sleeping with both girls at the same time, and sometimes just watching the two of them together.
Police found evidence of fantasy games, and dark mysticism, and signs that the teens lived in a self-absorbed and self-constructed fantasy world. According to Brian Peterson, a former Roanoke police detective, the trio would also cut each other, and drink each other’s blood. Merrilee told police that the plan had been to murder all their parents, and escape to Canada, because that’s the only way the teens could all be together. At the time of Susan’s murder, Merrilee had been in juvenile detention and didn’t participate; terrifyingly, she had tried to stab her own mother, who woke up just in time to prevent Merrilee stabbing her with a butcher knife, and called authorities.
Paul Henson had also planned, and failed, to murder his parents; one night, he reportedly waited with a gun in their home, but they literally dodged a bullet by staying in the city to get dinner and a movie. If only Susan had been so lucky.
Peterson believes that Jennifer was the mastermind behind the murder, and that David went along because he would do anything for his older sister. Peterson also described Jennifer’s demeanor in the interrogation room.
“Her eyes would glaze over and she would stare a hole through you,” he said in an interview with Oxygen. “She was very, for a kid that age, it was scary to see the way she would respond to the questions.”
Both Jennifer Bailey and Paul Henson were sentenced to 60 years in prison, meaning they’ll be able to be eligible for parole in 2038. David Bailey, the younger brother, got 26 years. He’ll be eligible for parole when he’s 40, in 2034. Merrilee, the informant, did not serve prison time.
