When our legislators enacted the death penalty, they had in mind the depraved type of person who killed with no regard for human life — a person like Jacob Sullivan, 46, who was sentenced to die last week by a Bucks County jury.

The following day, his girlfriend, Sara Packer, 44, a native of Brodheadsville and a graduate of Pleasant Valley High School where she was editor of her class’s yearbook and described as a brilliant student, was sentenced to life in prison for being an accomplice to an unspeakable, grisly killing.

They are accused of conspiring to rape and kill Sara Packer’s 14-year-old adopted daughter, Grace, in what was described as the culmination of a sexual fantasy. They dismembered her body and scattered the remains in Luzerne County, where they were found by hunters on Oct. 31, 2016, nearly five months after the killing.

Sullivan admitted that he and Sara Packer raped Grace for months before the day they killed her. After raping her, Sullivan, with Grace’s mother watching, fed her what he expected would be fatal over-the-counter sleep medication and left her bound and gagged in a sweltering, 100-degree attic for 12 hours.

When they returned but found that Grace was not dead as they had expected, Sullivan strangled her, and the two of them put her body in cat litter until they took Grace in pieces to a secluded part of Luzerne County.

According to police, both entered into a suicide pact, but both attempts failed. Each also accused the other of hatching the plot to do away with the 14-year-old.

The jury which decided Sullivan’s fate deliberated for a total of 12 hours over a three-day period before rendering its verdict. Sara Packer pleaded guilty to 19 counts and agreed to testify against Sullivan in exchange for a life sentence and as a way to avoid the death penalty. Given the facts of the case, she deserves death, too, but that’s the way our justice system works.

“You could not write a horror movie worse than what was done to Grace Packer,” said Bucks District Attorney Matt Weintraub.

County Judge Diane E. Gibbons called Sullivan a “monster.” “You have no soul,” she told him before sentencing. “I have never said that to another human being in my life.”

In addition to the life sentence, Gibbons sentenced Packer to an additional 42 to 104 years in prison, ensuring that she will never get parole.

“Evil attracts evil,” Gibbons told Packer. “Evil recognized evil, and this is what happens when two evil people with similar evil intent get together. People like Grace Packer die.”

When Grace was 3 years old, Sara Packer and her then husband, David, brought Grace into their home as a foster child. When Grace was 7, they adopted her and her younger brother. All told, the Packers fostered about 30 children.

The state charged that Grace was merely a paycheck to Sara Packer, who received $6,179 from Social Security, which she continued to collect even after Grace was dead.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Schorn told the judge that Grace was a virtual prisoner with a stepmother who brutalized and physically and psychologically tortured her most of her life.

“What motivated her was greed; Grace was a source of income,” Schorn said.

Sara Packer referred to Grace as a “nonentity” and admitted that she watched with sexual fascination as her stepdaughter pleaded with her to intervene as Sullivan was choking the life out of her.

Packer earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Randolph College in Virginia. She has worked as a caseworker in Northampton and Lehigh counties and lived in Allentown before moving to Bucks County.

Gibbons said she will be forever haunted by this case. “Grace will stay with me for the rest of my life,” she said.

Don’t expect Sullivan to die any time soon, if at all. With any death sentence, there is an automatic appeal. Not only that, but there has not been an execution in Pennsylvania since 1999, even though there are more than 150 inmates on death row. Gov. Tom Wolf imposed a moratorium on the death penalty shortly after he took office in 2015. He set up a study commission, which returned recommendations last year, including one to continue the death penalty but with modifications. A Wolf aide said the governor has been studying the panel’s findings.

When it comes to monsters like Jacob Sullivan, we need to make it clear that society will not tolerate this inhumanity. I don’t take the death penalty lightly, but in this case, the sooner it is carried out, the better.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com