This case always reminds me so much of the self professed Rod Ferrell, who we just talked about earlier this week. So many similarities. Since we just discussed Rod, I figured we should talk about Natasha Cornett today.
Natasha Cornett was born on January 26th of 1979. Her mother, Madonna Wallen, was married to a man named Ed Wallen, but she’d been cheating on him with a police officer by the name of Roger Burgess. This man was Natasha’s biological father. When the girl was very young, her mother left her husband to become a single mother. Natasha’s childhood in Pikeville, Kentucky wasn’t a happy one; with no father in sight and very little maternal care, Natasha grew up in poverty living in a run down trailer.
As a teen in the 90’s Natasha was into all things goth, which didn’t go over very well in the Bible Belt which is Kentucky. She was definitely a misfit. By middle school she was already displaying sign of bipolar disorder, and had developed an eating disorder. The older she grew, the more problems she had. Not only was her home life horrible, but now she was bullied and beaten on by classmates. Natasha attempted to get help, she pleaded with her school’s staff and even the police to help her, but no one ever came to her aid. In her second year of high school the teen decided that enough was enough and Natasha dropped out.
On her seventeenth birthday Natasha wed a long time friend called Stephen Cornett; on her wedding day the bride donned herself in a black dress complete with a matching dog collar; yeah she was kinda hard core about it. The marriage was short lived, Stephen ended the union after just six months. After the divorce, the teenager was absolutely devastated, and she began to spiral; Natasha was drinking, using hard drugs, and she began to self mutilate.
Around this time Natasha fell in with a group of like minded young friends: 17 year old Karen Howell, 20 year old Joseph Risner, 14 year old Jason Blake Bryant, 19 year old Joseph Mullins, and Crystal Rena Sturgill, who was 18. Natasha became the unofficial leader of this group, and she’d been itching to do something exciting. On April 6th of 1997 Natasha and her group rented a room at the Colley Motel in order to party, and they absolutely trashed the place. Because of the state of the room, the teenager feared that she’d be arrested. At this point she decided it would be best to skip town.
That morning Natasha gathered up her little gang and together and they all piled into Joseph’s old beat-up Chevrolet Citation for a road trip to New Orleans, Louisiana where they’d planned to make new lives for themselves. Sadly the teens hadn’t planned their trip very well. The car they’d been riding in was way too small for all of those people and the teens were cramped and miserable, so they decided to find a van which they could hijack. While on the road, the gang made a pit stop at a Tennessee rest station.
Unfortunately, the Lillelid family (Daddy Vidar, Mommy Delfina, little Tabitha was 6, and Peter was only 2) just so happened to be at that same rest stop. They were truly decent people, very straight laced, strict Jehovah’s Witnesses who had actually spent the weekend at an annual religious convention. The family saw the group of goth teens and tried to talk to them, the Lillelids thought that maybe convert them; this was all it took for the group to draw blood.
The teens kidnapped the caring family of 4 as they were climbing into their van, and they drove them to the middle of nowhere. During the ride, sweet little Tabitha even offered her captors some of her chocolates. When they arrived at their destination, a gravel road, the family was forced out of their van and into a ditch; there the teens then proceeded to shoot each of their victims, and the family was left for dead on the roadside.
The killers then stole the family’s vehicle and headed for Mexico. Mother and father died quickly, Tabitha died at the hospital, and Peter lived but he was left partially blind with a spinal cord injury. A judge determined that it would be better for the boy if he were sent back to Sweden to be raised by his father’s family. He even came to the US for a visit and an officer guarded him while he was here, to ensure his safety.
The teens were caught rather quickly. Ring leader Natasha received a lot of attention when she said that she was, in fact, the daughter of Satan. She even bragged that her name spelled backward was “Ah-Satan”, and stated that Satan himself would help her beat the charges. This didn’t quite work out the way she had hoped it would; Natasha was sentenced to 3 life sentences, as were her accomplices. None will ever be up for parole.
The last I heard, Natasha claims that she is innocent, she swears up and down that she’d begged her friends not to kill the family. In prison she has befriended the equally notorious Christa Gail Pike (we shall discuss her soon) and together they attempted to murder a fellow inmate, Patricia Jones, with a shoe string. Some people never change.
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Oh! And I hope you all had a happy Easter! Whether you believe or not, I still hope you made yourself half sick with chocolate! Here’s the only meme I ever made myself. I usually post it to Facebook but that would probably get me in trouble lately. My love to all❤️
