Trans teen who gunned down mom and her much-younger boyfriend gets hefty sentence in plea deal
A transgender Florida teenager was sentenced to 50 years behind bars after accepting a plea deal in the grisly 2024 slayings of her mother and her mom’s much-younger boyfriend.Julia Egler, 18, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the killings, in which she lay in wait for the couple to arrive at their Palm Bay home — greeting them with a “welcome home” before opening fire with her mother’s .38 revolver and then staging the scene to look like a burglary.The mom, Kelly McCollom, 38, and her boyfriend Matthew Szejnrok, 22, both died at the scene.Egler, who was born female but wanted to transition to male, was charged with two counts of first-degree premeditated murder until the plea deal, which will see her eligible for parole in 25 years.“I’m sorry,” she said during her sentencing Friday.
“I’m haunted by grief every day.I have shown that I can be rehabilitated.
Please give me a chance to reintegrate back into society.”The teen confessed to killing the pair, saying she disapproved of her mom dating someone so much younger — and had “reached her boiling point” with her mom’s disapproval of her transgender identity, according to the affidavit.After riddling her mom with bullets, she targeted Szejnrok, who fled to the bathroom and pleaded for his life.She shot him repeatedly until she ran out of bullets, then grabbed a kitchen knife and started stabbing him, bloodied and incapacitated, on the bathroom floor.A mortally wounded Szejnrok “essentially asked [Egler] to take him out of his misery,” according to the affidavit, at which point she went into her mother’s room to retrieve another bullet, loaded it and shot him in the head.She then called 911 and told the operator a man had broken into the home by smashing a sliding glass door with a hammer.When asked if the alleged assailant brought the hammer, Egler claimed “it was just the house hammer.
It was just by the back.”But her flimsy cover story quickly fell apart, with her...