Sarah Jo Pender | Ashley Blumenthal - Sites At Penn State

Today we are going to be talking about Sarah Jo Pender, an assisted murderer who did not pull the trigger, but has since been compared to a “Female Charles Manson.”

In July 2000, Sarah met Richard Hull and they began living together within a month.  Their relationship was good, but only 1 month into living together, Richard asked if 2 of his friends (a couple, Tricia Nordman and Anthony Cataladi) could stay with Sarah and Richard in August, 2000.  Sarah agreed and both couples soon moved into a two bedroom house.

However, the honeymoon phase didn’t last and by October, Anthony and Richard’s constant fighting drove Sarah to ask Richard to do something about Anthony.  And let me tell you, something was definitely done.

On October 25th, 2000, a local employee went to take out the trash and opened the dumpster to a not-so-fun surprise.  The bodies of Tricia and Anthony were found, covered in shotgun wounds.  After ID-ing the bodies, police searched the home of Sarah.  They found blood stains on the floor and then continued the hunt for Sarah and Richard.

Once the couple was caught, they were interrogated separately.

Sarah originally claimed that she went out for a walk to get away from an argument, and returned to Richard in the truck with the bodies loaded up.  Out of fear, she went along with Richard to dump the bodies, bought a hotel room, and went to work like normal the next day.

Richard gave the same story, but claimed he shot Anthony out of self defense.  However, this doesn’t add up because Tricia was shot as well, so Richard was brought up on charges for a double homicide and was sentenced to 90 years.

The police searched the hotel room and found the murder weapon and a receipt for the gun from day prior to the murder, showing that Sarah purchased the weapon.

Sarah was reinterviewed.  Her story was about the same with a few extra details, adding that Richard had asked her to leave because “this will get ugly.” The rest of the story is basically the same.

The trial began in July, 2000.  People  began saying that Sarah manipulated Richard to murder the couple, and compared her to a female Charles Manson (comparing her control overRichard to Manson’s control over his followers).  The main evidence against Sarah was a letter to Richard “she wrote” while they were in jail.  The letter stated: “I wish I could go back and change the events of that night … I didn’t mean to kill them that night, it must’ve been the acid.  I knew that you would try to take the blame …  I thought you would tell, but you stuck to your promise…. PS destroy this.”  Due to this damning evidence, Sarah was sentenced to 110 years in prison.  However, the letter was very debatably not written by Sarah, and she maintains her innocence.

Sources: Cult Liter Podcast episode 90, Wikipedia, News Articles