Inset: Tiffanie Lucas, Jayden and Maurice (Celine Tiffanie Ann/Facebook). Background: Lucas during her police interview after killing the two kids (Bullitt County Sheriff’s Office).
A 33-year-old Kentucky woman convicted of murdering her two young sons told police during her interrogation that she wouldn’t have hurt them but video games and YouTube were manipulating their minds, police body camera footage shows.
Tiffanie Ann Katherine Lucas was sentenced Friday to consecutive life sentences for murdering Maurice “Peanut” Baker Jr., 6, and Jayden Howard, 9, in Shepherdsville, about 20 miles south of Louisville, late last year. Lucas pleaded guilty in October to two counts of first-degree murder after initially mounting an insanity defense. Law&Crime obtained video footage from officers on scene and part of Lucas’ interview with detectives in the hours following the brutal slayings.
Lucas’ neighbor called 911 on Nov. 8, 2023, after she showed up and collapsed on the neighbor’s driveway. She then started screaming that her children “were dying.” Cops rushed to the scene on Brentwood Drive and found the boys suffering from fatal gunshot wounds to the head.
Body camera footage from inside the interrogation room at the Bullitt County Sheriff’s Office shows Lucas seemingly more concerned about the deputy watching her than the condition of her children. She kept harping on the deputy moving his fingers.
“I’m watching you on camera move your fingers several times,” she told him. “You just keep moving them. Stop. I’m watching. It’s not right.”
A detective came into the room and started interviewing her, asking her basic questions about the background. Unprompted, Lucas went on to say that game consoles like PlayStation and YouTube videos “manipulates” the minds of her children.
Previous coverage: ‘I’m so stupid’: Mom accused of shooting two young sons in the head claimed she fired four times in 30 seconds by accident, detective says
“I know I look crazy but I’m not crazy,” she told the detective. “I love my children. I love my boys so much. I wouldn’t have hurt them but I just felt like I was letting them play the video games and I wasn’t like focusing how I was supposed to, you know? Video games and the YouTube and the kids, it just messes their minds up to where people can manipulate their parents or do whatever they want. I feel like someone put something upon my house or me or something. I just don’t feel right. I don’t do this. I love my kids.”
The deputy with the body camera left the room but Lucas went on to admit to firing four shots in 30 seconds, claiming the shooting “was an accident,” and claiming that she was “manipulated through Facebook, through the internet or through Wi-Fi […] into doing what she did.”
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