Sarah Tapia Franco (Cass County Sheriff’s Office) and deputies responding to the scene where she killed her two sons (WVTM screenshot)
A 37-year-old woman in Alabama will spend the rest of her days behind bars for the murders of her two young sons, strangling the boys and slitting their throats.
Cullman County Circuit Judge Martha Williams on Thursday ordered Sarah Tapia Franco to serve two sentences of life in a state correctional facility for the slayings of 3-year-old Alvaro Garcia and 9-year-old Taylor Garcia, authorities announced.
After being indicted by a grand jury in early 2020, Franco pleaded guilty this month to two counts of capital murder in the kids’ deaths. She was indicted on an additional count of capital murder of two or more persons which was later dropped. Her life sentences will run concurrently, meaning at the same time.
“There is no amount of punishment that would be enough or harsh enough for Sarah Tapia Franco. I am confident that she will never see the light of day again,” District Attorney Champ Crocker said in a news release announcing the sentencing.
The horror began nearly five years ago in a rural area located about 60 miles north of Birmingham, Alabama.
Deputies with the Cullman County Sheriff’s Office on the afternoon of Saturday, Oct. 12, 2019, responded to a call at a home in the 4000 block of County Road 1718, authorities said. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders said they came across a grisly scene.
“You know, in law enforcement, there’s things you can prepare yourself for, and there’s things you can’t prepare yourself for, and this is an incident that you can never prepare for,” Cullman County Sheriff Matt Gentry said in a press conference at the time. “When deputies arrived, we set up a perimeter, and in that perimeter search we deployed our K-9. Our K-9 led us through an open field that adjoined the house, there’s some neighboring farms, in the field we were able to locate one Sara Tapia, which is the mother of the children and the person that we have in custody. We did locate a knife and there were multiple self-inflicted wounds on her.”
Franco was airlifted to a nearby hospital where she was admitted into the intensive care unit due to the self-inflicted wounds, the Cullman Tribune reported. During her hospital stay, Gentry said that Franco was guarded by deputies 24 hours a day before she was transferred to a state mental health facility.
Franco remained in the state facility until July 2021, the Tribune reported. She was reportedly transferred to the Cullman County Detention Center following a competency hearing.
In addition to her lifetime incarceration, Franco was ordered to pay $20,000 to the Crime Victim’s Compensation Assessment, about $10,584 in restitution, and $10,000 in court costs.
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