Quote:Twenty months ago, police officers took Tia Skinner to jail.
Just 17, she knew she was facing life in prison for plotting the attack that killed her father and critically injured her mother.
"I regret everything," Skinner, now 19, said in an interview from the Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility, her first comments since her arrest. "I regret all my decisions."
Paul Skinner, 47, died Nov. 12, 2010, after chasing attackers Jonathan Kurtz and James Preston out of his home. Mara Skinner, his wife, suffered more than 25 knife wounds.
Since being sent to a state prison near Ann Arbor, Tia Skinner said she has not heard from her mother, her siblings or anyone else from the close-knit Yale community near Port Huron.
"It's been rough. It's hard losing your whole family in a blink of an eye," she said. "It's tough because that's my family; they're supposed to stay by you through thick and thin."
She was adopted by the Skinners as a child and is Mara Skinner's biological niece. She said her biological mother has contacted her, but they do not have a relationship.
Skinner said her parents' opposition to her two-week relationship with Kurtz was the reason she plotted to murder them.
Skinner drew a map of her neighborhood and diagram of her home to lead Kurtz and Preston to the bedroom where her parents were sleeping. She left a ground-floor window unlocked for them to enter and placed knives on her bed.
Skinner said she didn't see her dad chasing them from their house but heard his screams as her older brother, an emergency room nurse, tried to save him.
"It sounded awful to me; it literally made my heart break in two to hear my dad like that," she said. "I think it was just awful -- I just had a bad temper, and I took it out on somebody who didn't deserve it, somebody who looked after me and took care of me."
She said when she was told Paul Skinner had died, she was devastated.
A Michigan State Police trooper testified during Skinner's trial that she showed no emotion afterward.
Skinner said she hopes the community knows she is sorry for her role in the attack.
Although life in prison is difficult, Skinner said, she takes it one day at a time with the hope she will be freed. She is appealing on the grounds that she was interviewed by police as a minor without parental consent and had ineffective counsel.
Kurtz and Preston, both 18 at the time of the attack, also were sentenced to life in prison.
Skinner said she hopes to request a new sentencing. A recent opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding mandatory life sentences for juveniles will allow her a chance at freedom before she dies. She turned 18 less than a month after the attack.
She said she believes 20 years would be a proper sentence for her role in the attack.
"I believe that everybody deserves a second chance in life," she said.
07-12-2012 11:54 PM
R Smoov
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RE: "It's hard losing your whole family in a blink of an eye"
(07-12-2012 11:54 PM)SpiderKing Wrote: Said the woman who masterminded the murder of her adoptive father.
There was a saying about Nazis, that they were always at your throat or at your feet; if they couldn't kill you, they'd be begging for mercy. They'd suddenly renounce their side and their beliefs, a rather convenient penance. Of course, had the tables turned, they'd have no problem killing you.
Women and children are often the same. They may only show 'remorse' or 'regret' once they've been caught, and it's clear they'll get punished. Once forced to submit to a greater authority, they do it with gusto. Men are more likely to just give a cold murderous stare and ditch the whole phony 'turned a new leaf' protocol.
Women and children are not Nazis, of course. It's just that that mix of cowardice and duplicity is seen more frequently among women than men.
(This post was last modified: 07-13-2012 01:23 AM by Basil Ransom.)
07-13-2012 01:22 AM
The following 2 users Like Basil Ransom's post:2 users Like Basil Ransom's post Lemmo, soup
WanderingSoul
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RE: "It's hard losing your whole family in a blink of an eye"
(07-12-2012 11:54 PM)SpiderKing Wrote: She is appealing on the grounds that she was interviewed by police as a minor without parental consent and had ineffective counsel.
Well, that would be tough for the police to interview her with parental consent considering she just had her father murdered, and mother stabbed 25 times.
RE: "It's hard losing your whole family in a blink of an eye"
(07-13-2012 01:31 AM)RioNomad Wrote:
(07-12-2012 11:54 PM)SpiderKing Wrote: She is appealing on the grounds that she was interviewed by police as a minor without parental consent and had ineffective counsel.
Well, that would be tough for the police to interview her with parental consent considering she just had her father murdered, and mother stabbed 25 times.
On appeal she will have to show that but for the interview, she would be innocent. No chance of that happening. Lulz at ineffective assistance of counsel; nice try but that standard is almost impossible to meet. She is (thankfully) going down.
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