Veronica Youngblood Virginia woman found guilty of killing 2 daughters to get revenge on ex. Mother had pled not guilty by reason of insanity. A mother’s descent into madness or calculated ploy for revenge? Jury to now decide sentencing.
A Virginia woman has been found guilty of murdering her two young daughters in a bid to get revenge on her ex-husband, who planned to move away with one of the girls.
Veronica Youngblood, 37, of Fairfax admitted killing her children, 15-year-old Sharon Castro and 5-year-old Brooklynn Youngblood — while pleading not guilty by reason of insanity to the Aug. 5, 2018 murders, according to the Washington Post.
However, the jury was not convinced that mental illness was a major factor in the slayings.
The panel on Wednesday convicted Youngblood, a former sex worker who defense attorneys said was physically and sexually abused by her own family, of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of felony firearm use.
During the trial, Fairfax County Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Kelsey Gill described Youngblood as a malicious, selfish and deliberate killer.
‘I killed Brooklynn. I killed Sharon. I’m going to kill myself. I hate you. Bye,’
As her teenage daughter lay dying, she called her ex-husband, Ron Youngblood, to tell him she hated him and she’d shot their kids.
‘I killed Brooklynn. I killed Sharon. I’m going to kill myself. I hate you. Bye,’ the ex wife told her former husband.
The ex planned to move with the couple’s youngest to Missouri.
Killing the children was her revenge, prosecutors said, according to the Washington Post.
‘This case goes well beyond merely having a mental illness,’ Gill said during closing arguments. ‘This goes well beyond depression. This goes well beyond PTSD. This goes well beyond being suicidal.’
Youngblood had bought a handgun nine days before the killings, Gill told jurors.
And she’d given her kids sleeping gummies so they wouldn’t be able to stop her rampage in their McLean, Virginia apartment.
Defendant grew up with daily abuse before being abandoned and turning to sex work
Brooklyn died at the scene from a bullet to the head. Sharon was shot twice — once in the back and once in the chest — but lived long enough to call 911 and say her mom pulled the trigger.
‘I don’t wanna die,’ the eldest girl is heard telling a dispatcher. ‘Please help me.’
Sharon died at hospital days later.
Youngblood’s defense attorney, Fairfax County Public Defender Dawn Butorac, said the Argentinean-born defendant grew up in poverty and was subjected to ongoing parental abuse. Her father physically assaulted her with a belt, broomstick and branch, while her grandfather sexually abused her as a child according to WTOP.
The attorney described Youngblood turning to sex work after her parents left her and went on to have her oldest daughter at the age of 16. It was while working as a sex worker that the woman met her ex husband, a former customer, where she went on to find initial stability in her marriage to her ex-husband.
However, after the marriage soured, and Youngblood’s ex-husband said he wanted to move to Missouri and take the girls with him, Young feared her daughters ‘might be forced to relive’ the trauma she had experienced if she weren’t with them, the defense argued.
Jury found defendant guilty in less than a day after two week trial
‘She didn’t snap — she slid’ into a deepening depression before the shooting,’ the defense claimed.
The defense asked jurors to find Youngblood not criminally responsible for the killings because ‘she didn’t have the will to not do what she did.’
According to Youngblood, she was hearing voices. The woman was practicing a South American religion whose followers believe they could communicate with the dead.
Youngblood admitted to investigators on tape that she’d killed her kids, then said she wanted the death penalty, that all she wanted was to die following the death of her two children.
Prosecutors attacked the defense’s insanity argument and said Youngblood was acting disingenuous, the Washington Post said.
‘This person wants to manipulate, this person wants to lie, ensue chaos, all for this person’s personal gain,’ said prosecutor Claiborne Richardson. ‘Ms. Youngblood is spiteful, selfish, vengeful and calculated.’
The trial lasted two weeks. It took the jury a day to declare her guilty.
The jury will return on Monday to deliberate on what punishment to be meted out to Youngblood. Jurors will now have to decide between twenty years in prison or life as prosecutors will seek two life terms.
