Was the mother "estranged" before all this happened? Not clarified here. But if she was, who in the hell thought it was a good idea to place these boys with a violent, lunatic father?
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/idaho-teen-sentenced-20-years-deaths-father-brother-article-1.2588562
Idaho teen sentenced 20 years in deaths of zombie-obsessed father and younger brother
BY Nicole Hensley /
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS /
Monday, April 4, 2016, 10:12 PM
A 16-year-old Idaho boy who murdered his abusive, zombie-obsessed father before brutally stabbing his autistic brother to death, will spend 20 years behind bars.
After a jury found Eldon Gale Samuel III guilty of first-degree and second-degree murder charges in late January, a Kootenai County judge slapped the teenager with two concurrent sentences Friday.
Eldon will spend the next two decades in an adult prison, rather than a juvenile facility, looking back on the night of March 24, 2014. At age 14, he riddled Eldon Samuel Jr. with bullets before moving on to Jonathan Samuel, 13. Eldon shot him repeatedly and then hacked his kid brother to death as the scared child cowered under a bed at their Coeur d’Alene home.
The teen reflected on his actions during a sentencing hearing Friday afternoon.
“I’m not the same person I was two years ago,” KXLY-TV reported Eldon as telling Judge Benjamin Simpson. “I feel like a whole new person, but that doesn't excuse what I did."
He acknowledged killing his little brother, who he referred to as “Johnny.”
“I lost my dad and my brother, Johnny, my own little brother,” Eldon added.
Mental health experts believe parental neglect and a dysfunctional home life with his doomsday prepper father contributed to signs of reactive detachment disorder in Samuel, the Spokesman Review reported.
During the trial, the victim’s estranged wife, Tina, said the elder Samuel planned to take his sons into the mountains to train against a zombie apocalypse.
Eldon shot his father in the stomach and pumped three more bullets into his head to prevent him from reanimating into the flesh-eating undead, a defense attorney argued in court.
Judge Simpson acknowledged that Samuel will require treatment to prevent future streaks of violence.
“Mr. Samuel, you’re going to have to live with the fact you took Jonathan’s life for the rest of your life,” Simpson told Eldon.
“You’re going to need treatment for a long time,” he added, according to the Spokesman-Review.