Left: Erin Taylor (Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office). Right: Lesley Luna Pantaleon (Montgomery Police Department).
Erin Taylor, 20, who stopped off for smoothies from McDonald’s with her co-defendants after they viciously murdered 17-year-old Lesley Luna Pantaleon, was sentenced to spend 50 years in prison on Thursday.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Taylor was one of three young women who were charged as adults in Pantaleon’s 2020 slaying in Alabama. Taylor was 16 at the time of Pantaleon’s murder. She was charged as an adult alongside Ta’Niya Merriweather, Tyeshia Whisenant and Keontae Davidson.
Whisenant pleaded guilty to lesser murder charge in June. She was initially facing a capital murder charge. A sentencing date has not yet been set for her. Davidson, now 20 years old, pleaded guilty to murder as well and will be sentenced on Sept. 12. Merriweather, also 20, is awaiting trial, according to local NBC affiliate WFSA,
Pantaleon was first reported missing on June 24, 2020. Her body was found in Catoma Creek days later on July 4, 2020. Pantaleon had been struck with a metal pipe and stabbed repeatedly. Her phone was stolen and so was her truck.
Prosecutors said that the entire gruesome affair kicked off after Taylor’s cousin allegedly took a gun from Pantaleon. Montgomery police said Pantaleon had “put out a hit” on Whisenant’s home, but not Taylor nor her cousin. What ensued was a fight between Pantaleon and Whisenant that escalated into a group attack on the 17-year-old girl.
As Law&Crime reported, Pantaleon was brutally beaten in the back seat of a car driven by Taylor. When the teens pulled over, the beating continued — except instead of fists, Pantaleon was hit repeatedly with a metal pole and stabbed over and over again.
An autopsy was reportedly hard to complete initially because Pantaleon had so much extensive damage done to her face and body that it was hard to identify her.
Police said the teens then drove off, leaving Pantaleon, and went back to Whisenant’s house, woke up another girl, and told her they would bring her to see Pantaleon’s body. When they returned to where the girl was, Pantaleon was still alive; her feet were moving.
Detectives said the attackers put Pantaleon back in the car, took her on a brief but bumpy drive to a nearby creek, and then dumped her body, along with the metal pole, in it. Whisenant told police Pantaleon looked like she was still alive in the creek and trying to swim.
They left her there, piled into Pantaleon’s car and then drove to McDonald’s. It was around 6 a.m. In court, prosecutors presented receipts and surveillance video showing the teens purchased smoothies and then parked the car in the parking lot of a local church.
Prosecutors argued the capital murder charge was warranted because the crime also involved the robbery of Pantaleon’s phone and truck. In addition to killing the victims for those two items, prosecutors said, the defendants “tortured” Pantaleon in the back seat in an effort to get her cellphone pass code.
According to the Montgomery Advertiser, during a preliminary hearing in the case in October 2020, prosecutors alleged that some of Pantaleon’s last words to her killers were: “Just take me home, you can have my truck.”
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