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She was a loving mother, not willing to give up on her children.

Her daughter was driving them apart with her drug problem.

It really fell on her to support her grandson and try to keep the family together as best she could

until a gruesome discovery changes everything.

She was facing the door with her hands taped like this and her feet taped together.

The bus batter hits all over the bathroom, on the ceiling, cabinets.

What animal would do that to somebody?

Fears mount that there may be more than one victim.

There's a missing woman and child.

I'm worried about them.

Is this a kidnapping and she just happened to be collateral damaged?

As investigators track the killer, they'll untangle a web of lies.

Somebody sending messages because she should be dead.

I believe that she's lying.

That she's covering up for something.

He pretty much cared less for the fact that she was deceased.

I don't know if there's any justice that would fit someone doing something that horrific.

4:45 p.m., January 9th, 2014, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.

State police investigator Owen Leonard is wrapping up his shift at the Kiske Valley Police Barracks outside Pittsburgh when his phone begins to ring.

We received the call that there was a body in a trailer residence.

I went right from the station, received the search warrant at the local magistrate, and then from there to the scene.

The 911 caller, 43-year-old Larry Wagner, says he's just discovered the body of his wife, 51-year-old Dawn Wagner.

I was overcome with shock and grief.

I just found my wife, and

it was just,

I was completely traumatized.

When investigators arrive on the scene, they're immediately taken aback.

When you walk in there, you smell and you smell death.

There was blood splatter that started in the kitchen, and there was blood through it the entire trailer.

Investigators trace the trail to the bathroom.

The bus spatter hits all over the bathroom, on the ceiling, cabinets, the sink area, the toilet, the tub.

There was just a gruesome scene.

But the most gruesome sight is the state of Dawn Wagner's body on the bathroom floor.

Her hands were up around her face as almost like a protective covering.

She had a one-force trauma from her head.

Her ankles were bound with duct tape.

Her wrists were bound with duct tape.

She's on the floor, just covered in dry blood.

The evidence that was observed on the victim's body gave us an indication that she was...

deceased and in the area, in the residence for a period of time, at least four or five days.

You don't have to be a criminal investigator to look at the way, the condition she was in, to realize that she was beaten.

This is bad.

I remember the look on her face, her skin tone, her hair.

She was in bad shape.

I knew immediately she'd been murdered.

Dawn Marie Verkotteran was a single mother of two two when she met Larry Wagner in 1999.

We met on the job in the Largo, Florida area.

The very first time I saw her, she walked into the building and she walked right by my machine and she smiled at me.

Blonde and beautiful at 37, Dawn could turn heads and Larry Wagner was no exception.

She had the kind of smile that when she walked in anywhere, people gravitated toward her and just wanted to talk to her.

I can still hear her laugh.

She had a contagious laugh.

She was a happy,

beautiful person.

She really was.

Dawn was a beautiful girl and beautiful smile and just a good friend, beautiful friend.

There was a lot of things we'd do together.

We liked to cook together.

We'd play games together.

It was natural.

We didn't have to work at it.

We just liked each other's person.

After a year and a half of living together as a family in Pinellas Park, Florida, in 2001, Dawn decided to make things official.

One day she asked me, she says, I'm going to ask you to marry me.

I said, you want to get married?

The whole day at work, you're just sitting there palpitating and smiling inside because This is going to be, you know, one of your biggest days of your life you're ever going to remember.

And it was great.

So after work, we drove over to the Justice of Peace, and that evening, we got married.

Even though they were newlyweds, Larry knew the most important people in Dawn's life were still her children.

There was Timothy, and then there was Sarah.

From her previous marriage to her first husband, she had Mindy and Jennifer, and they remained up north, the Midwest area.

Dawn shared a particularly close bond with her youngest daughter, Sarah.

Dawn and Sarah were like best friends.

They got along.

They hardly argued.

They were more like sisters than mother and daughter.

The relationship that Sarah and I had was more of, she looked at me as a true father figure, not a stepfather.

She was missing that piece in her life.

Sarah and I lived right down the street from each other.

Sarah was always the popular girl.

She loved school.

She was outgoing.

She had lots of friends.

Sarah also had an independent streak.

As she grew older, she started spending more time with her friends and away from Dawn and Larry's watchful eyes.

She's changing, and she at that point is not as close with us as when she was a little girl.

You know, as she got older and still in high school, I think the quality of people that she met at that time were changing.

And I think that she began to gravitate toward that.

Sometimes the cool kids are the cool kids and they're not the best kids.

She had different friends than I had, and I didn't prefer to be around the people she was hanging out with.

That's when we started to really learn more about the drug use.

Sarah's drug use escalated quickly, and by the time Sarah turned 17, she'd begun to use heroin.

She looked a little thin, she looked tired, and she definitely looked like the drugs just took over.

As Sarah's addiction spiraled out of control, Dawn was desperate to help her youngest daughter get clean.

She's not taking care of herself.

She's spending time away.

We started noticing that she's losing a lot of weight.

She'd go into the bathroom upstairs and we would hear her physically getting sick and vomiting.

Larry eventually suggested they relocate to Pennsylvania and get Sarah help.

He thought it would help the relationship within the family to be closer to his parents, that they would have some more help, especially with Sarah fighting her drug problem.

Sarah did have to go to rehab

in order to stay in the house.

That was a rule that she had to follow.

But just as soon as she'd get clean, Sarah would begin using again.

And her parents feared her on-again, off-again boyfriend wasn't helping.

She would say, we're fighting.

He's being a jerk.

And they wouldn't see each other for a couple days, but they'd always get back together again.

Sarah's life became more complicated when she and her boyfriend had a son in 2011.

She was telling us, I'm not using.

I don't want to hurt the baby.

Her son came out fine.

The birth of her first grandchild was a blessing for Dawn.

She was excited.

She was going to be a grandmother.

Her focus always was about her grandson.

She worked very hard to provide a good life for her daughter and her grandson, but really fell on Dawn

to support her grandson and try to keep the family together as best she could.

But the stress of supporting Sarah proved to be too much for Dawn's marriage.

We'd already been married for 13 years when we separated.

We still loved each other as people, but you know, you can't be with them because there are issues in the way.

It was one of those situations where, okay, we don't know how long we're going to be apart.

She may end up back with me at some point.

Dawn, Sarah, and her grandson all moved into a trailer park in Westmoreland County, where Sarah tried to get back on the right path.

She was

getting her life straightened out, and she said she was doing really, really well.

The last conversation I had with Sarah, she told me everything was going great.

She was loving back with Dawn.

Dawn was just happy as can be.

I could just tell in her voice.

She sounded very, seriously, very happy.

But now, investigators are tasked with figuring out how this happy grandmother wound up beaten and brutally murdered on her bathroom floor.

Her body was bloated.

She's on the floor, just covered in dry blood.

As investigators study the horrific scene, Larry Wagner steps forward with new information.

I told them that my wife had been living with her daughter and her grandson, and I don't know where they are.

We send out a polo immediately.

Coming up, police reconstruct the horror of Dawn Wagner's final moments.

She was probably dragged into the bathroom.

Duct tape.

She was living during part of the attack.

And a witness becomes becomes a suspect.

The first scenario that I think of is a domestic situation.

On the afternoon of January 9th, 2014, Pennsylvania state police are investigating the brutal murder of 51-year-old Dawn Marie Wagner.

But Dawn may not be the crime's only victim.

There's a missing woman and child, the victim's daughter, Sarah, and the victim's grandson.

And Mrs.

Wagner's car was gone from the residence.

So we're looking and trying to find out where they kidnapped.

While officers across the state begin the search for Sarah and her son, As night falls, Pennsylvania state troopers continue searching the brutal crime scene for answers.

There were 18 blows within the head, shoulder, and neck area, all the upper body, upper shoulder area.

It appears that she may have tried to fight back.

The blood casting off and hitting the walls and the cabinets in the refrigerator.

It told us that this assault started somewhere in and around the kitchen.

There was a small amount of blood down the hallway, drag marks down the hallway.

She was probably dragged into the bathroom, duct tape, so we were assuming that she was living during during part of the attack.

Investigators believe that after killing Dawn, the murderer worked to clean up the scene.

There were bloody rags and mats found in the laundry room area.

There was so much blood, I don't know how you could clean it up.

Then, in the kitchen, CSI find the murder weapon.

A bloody hammer was found in the garbage can.

You think, like, what animal would do that to somebody?

Why would you do that?

It's just, it's horrific.

After sending Don's body to the coroner for an autopsy, investigators searched the rest of the home.

The house wasn't ransacked.

It wasn't like somebody rummaged through their house and took stuff.

There's no forced entry.

This wasn't just a botched burglary attempt or something like that.

You're thinking most likely it is someone that has some type of relationship that would be allowed to get into the house.

Investigators believe that not only did the killer know Dawn, that person knew Dawn's two-year-old grandson too.

We were able to notice that there were child gate at the bathroom door.

They had put his baby gate up so the baby doesn't go in there.

The first scenario that I think of is a domestic situation.

Is there a husband, a boyfriend, an ex-boyfriend involved?

Investigators immediately turned to the man who called 911, Dawn's estranged husband, Larry Wagner.

I take him and get him inside my patrol vehicle, and we start the interview right there.

He was very, he was emotional and shook up.

And he basically spills out his life to me.

Larry told me that he had found out that Dawn had cheated on him with one of her previous bosses when they lived in another state.

The information gives Detective Gross pause.

Could jealousy have sparked a violent confrontation?

Larry could have overpowered Dawn.

That was one of the things we would have had to rule out.

I think I was just so shocked out of my mind.

I'd still tell her, I love you.

Never stopped loving her.

We still loved each other as people.

We would text at least once every other day.

He was very forthright about his relationship with Dawn, that it wasn't a very hostile relationship,

very amicable, reasonable.

In fact, Larry claims it wasn't just infidelity that had driven a wedge between him and his estranged wife.

The drug use, that was a huge blow to our relationship for sure.

Obviously, we were very focused on our daughter's health foremost.

She was spiraling more and more out of control in front of us.

There was a lot of turmoil, a lot of fighting.

At some point, things start coming up missing in the the house.

Rings, jewelry, my lawnmower, she's stealing everything.

And we went to go to the bank and

realize that our savings had been cleaned out.

According to Larry, Dawn worked tirelessly to get Sarah clean.

We said, if you go get help, we'll help you get there.

And you can go through a program.

And you can come back.

So she did.

She checked in.

Larry says that Sarah would come home clean and for a while things would be good until Sarah started hanging out with the father of her child.

I think there was this initial point where she did try to genuinely quit.

She was hanging around the house quite a bit and then she'd go hang out with her boyfriend.

And I think things took a turn every time that would happen.

Larry gave a pretty good description of the relationship being tumultuous and Sarah's life had spun out of control when she got tangled up with her boyfriend.

Larry says that he tried to take a tough love approach with his stepdaughter and her boyfriend.

Dawn was in a bad position.

She didn't want to lose

everything.

It was tough love with me.

As time continued to go on, it seemed like the attitude really started amping up.

So now we're getting into arguments.

It really deteriorated quite a bit between Sarah and I.

We banned him from being in the house.

We wanted him away and out of her life.

While Larry seems to be casting suspicion on Sarah's boyfriend, detectives can't help but wonder if the real killer is seated across from them.

The first person you're after is the spouse.

You know,

let's rule him out.

Step one.

According to Larry, he hadn't seen Dawn in days and only came by after receiving an unusual call from her boss.

Dawn's boss had contacted him because Larry was listed as her emergency contact at her place of work.

I was at work on the 9th of January, and her boss calls me and he says,

He says, Larry, I have not heard or seen Dawn

since New Year's.

And I'm thinking, what?

So Dawn's boss asks him if he can go check on her.

It was unlocked at the time.

So I just pushed it open.

I wanted to go to the back room.

I opened the door and Dawn's not there.

So I turned left and flipped on the light to the bathroom.

And that's where I saw Dawn.

Larry says that Dawn last texted him three days earlier on January 6th, but something about the message seemed off.

He related that to some of the misspelling of the words.

He said Dawn never did that.

I talked to him in the car for about 30 to 45 minutes.

I think he still cared for her.

I absolutely do.

After speaking with him, I didn't think he had anything to do with Dawn's demise.

While detectives wrap up with Larry, investigators survey the growing crowd of neighbors outside Dawn's trailer.

Two neighbors who lived in the same community as Dawn are heartbroken, they are shocked, and they're wondering out loud who could do this to Dawn.

Neighbors confirm that Sarah's boyfriend was living there and that while Dawn was at work, he entertained suspicious guests all day long.

There were reports from neighbors of people stopping at the trailer, a different vehicle stopping at the trailer.

We are getting some of those types of reports, and we believe that we're dealing with drug activity.

Mrs.

Wagner wasn't very happy with Sarah's boyfriend and Sarah had recently got out of drug rehab.

Now she feels that he was enabling Sarah.

He wasn't helping her at all.

By the new year, neighbors say Dawn seemed to be reaching her limit with Sarah's boyfriend and the drugs.

You don't want that under your roof.

Dawn did indicate that this activity, this lifestyle that you have, continues, you're not going to be welcome here.

Had Dawn made good on her threats, and had Sarah's boyfriend taken it out on her family?

I'm worried about them.

Is this a kidnapping?

Was this a domestic?

And

she just happened to be collateral damaged.

We then started making phone calls looking for him.

Coming up, police go toe-to-toe with their key suspect.

It was very unusual to discover that the person you're looking for is right there under your nose.

And chilling details emerge.

It was always a concern for us that this might have been a drug deal gone bad.

At that point in time, a drug dealer showed up at the trailer demanding money that she owed him.

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Hours after the body of 51-year-old Dawn Wagner was discovered brutally beaten in her home, investigators fear her daughter's boyfriend could be responsible for the heinous act.

Don and Sarah's boyfriend, they did get along sometimes and that they fought quite a bit.

While investigators begin tracking down Sarah's boyfriend, Don's autopsy report comes in.

And it was discovered that Miss Wagner was strangled.

There's a level of hate, rage, anger.

To actually strangle someone.

to kill them is different than any other type of way to kill somebody that you're going to have.

It's very aggressive.

You have to apply some pressure to strangle.

It looked to me anyhow that it was a rage.

This was an escalation right away.

You know, she might have known the attacker.

The coroner places Dawn's brutal death around New Year's Eve, nine days before she was found.

But investigators know that the last text sent from Dawn's phone was sent on January 6th, nearly a week after the murder.

Somebody sent him messages because she should be dead by the timeframe of these text messages.

Could Sarah's boyfriend have been trying to cover up his crimes?

Detectives can't be sure, but a phone call is about to bring them one step closer to the answer.

We found out that he was incarcerated at Allegheny County Jail.

He was incarcerated because he was involved in other drug activity and thefts.

I don't ever remember in 21 years having a case where we are looking for people that were already in jail.

So it was very fortunate.

He was in jail, I believe, the 28th of December on his violation.

Looking at the timeframe of when this happened, he couldn't have done this murder.

So now we want to talk to him, get information about the whereabouts of Sarah.

At 10.30 p.m., officers arrive at the Allegheny County Jail and meet with Sarah's boyfriend.

Our main goal was to find out if he knew the whereabouts of Sarah and of his son.

We initially asked several questions about, you know, when was the last time he's seen or heard from Sarah?

He then questioned us, why are you asking about this?

And we told him that Sarah's mother, Dawn, was discovered deceased in the trailer.

He didn't appear as he was upset about the death of Mrs.

Wagner.

He pretty much cared less for the fact that she was deceased.

Though he admits they'd had their problems, detectives know there is no way he committed the murder.

He said, you know, I've been incarcerated for a period of time.

He was picked out December 28th, you know, so that's

yeah, he's believable.

Before they let him go, detectives ask if he knows anything about Sarah and his son.

His answer is a shock to detectives.

He told us that she was also in the Allegheny County jail.

We were able to ascertain that Sarah was arrested earlier on a bank robbery.

Allegheny deputies tell investigators that Sarah was picked up on January 7th, 2014.

She drives her two-year-old son about 45 minutes away from her home into a shopping center in Allegheny County in the the Versalesboro, McKeesport area.

She tries to rob a subway restaurant, is unable to do it, leaves the restaurant, walks across the parking lot to a PNC bank, and tries to rob the bank.

All of this while her two-year-old son is waiting in the car, completely unaware of what's happening.

She's able to make off with about $320 in cash.

She gets back in the car, drives away, doesn't get very far before local police arrest her.

Deputies say that while Sarah was sent to jail, her son was sent to his paternal grandmother.

It was very unusual to discover that the person you're looking for is right there under your nose.

Now investigators want answers.

Seated across from Sarah, detectives struggle to imagine the frail woman before them could be a killer.

You really don't want to think that somebody would kill their mother.

She looked like a drug user, thin, not well kept.

We just looked her hands and body over to see if there was any signs that she was in a struggle.

She had a small mark on her hand.

That was the only injury we were able to observe.

When we interviewed Sarah, she...

didn't give any indication that she knew what was going on.

She's just wondering, hey, why are you guys here at the jail?

Want to interview me about my bank robbery?

That's when officers tell Sarah the tragic news.

We had spoken to Sarah, informed her her mother was found dead in the bathroom with injuries to her head.

She initially said, you're lying.

You could tell that she's thinking what to say.

When detectives finally convince her that they are telling the truth, Sarah breaks down in tears and says that the murder is all her fault.

Sarah was a known drug user, so that was always a concern for us is that,

you know, this might have been a drug deal gone bad.

She had last seen her mother on the 31st of December.

She said at that point in time, a drug dealer who she known as Stefan had showed up at the trailer demanding money that she owed for previous heroin purchase.

She said Stefan and another drug dealer showed up at the residence, indicating that her mother was being detained in a bathroom area in their residence.

Sarah says that without a job, she had gone into debt to Stefan to pay for her habit.

Stefan ordered her to make a withdrawal at the local MAC machine.

Sarah says that terrified, she packed up her two-year-old son, took her mother's purse, and drove to a nearby gas station.

Sarah takes her mother's debit card, goes to an ATM, and withdraws about $600.

She came back with money to pay her drug debt.

But even after she had paid up, Sarah says that Stefan still wouldn't show her where her mother was.

Sarah asked, did you hurt my mother?

And Stefan said no.

Sarah explains she took Stefan at his word and left the house with her son and hasn't seen Stefan or her mother since.

She was indicating that Stefan and another black male who was with Stefan may have killed her mother.

Coming up, detectives confront a cold-blooded killer.

It was just a complete lack of remorse, just complete apathy, just very nonchalant.

But can investigators separate fact from fiction?

At that point, they opened up to us about, look, here's what really happened.

In the early morning hours of January 10th, 2014, investigators are working to track down a drug dealer named Stefan, who Sarah Vercotteran fears may be responsible for the murder of her mother, Don Wagner.

When she gave us information about the drug dealer Stefan, we have no idea where to find Stefan.

They don't have a full name, don't have a last name.

Based on her stories that made absolutely zero sense, we were able to figure out that probably there isn't a Stefan.

I believe she's lying, that she's covering up for something.

During her interview, Sarah had mentioned she was driving her boyfriend's mother's vehicle.

But when the Pennsylvania State Police check the impound lot, they discover something else.

She was picked up in her mother's red Chevy, and the vehicle had been impounded.

If she can lie about whose car she was driving, what else is Sarah lying about?

We had found out that Sarah had visited the Sunoco gas station located in Delmont Borough.

Once we went there, we were able to get their video surveillance tape and we actually saw Sarah inside the store attempting to use her mother's ATM card to get cash.

Did Sarah really give that that money to her dealer or keep it for herself?

Hoping for a lead, detectives check the security footage of other businesses in the area, including a nearby Walmart.

On January 4th, 2014, Sarah is caught on surveillance video at the Delmont Walmart, which isn't far from where the murder occurred.

When she went into Walmart, she had purchased some cleaning materials in a large, like rubber-made tub.

With this footage, police are able to determine that Sarah bought cleaning supplies four days after her mother's murder and just three days before her arrest.

It seemed like all arrows pointed towards the fact that it was her daughter that killed her.

It was shocking.

Investigators return to the Allegheny County Jail and load 25-year-old Sarah Verkotaran into the back of the squad car to escort her back to the Pennsylvania police barracks for further questioning.

I drove the vehicle.

Trooper Andrekanick was in the back seat with Sarah, gave her a cigarette, and at that point she opened up to us about, look, here's what really happened.

Sarah tells investigators that her mother had recently forced her into rehab.

Though she came out clean, by New Year's Eve, her craving for heroin was overwhelming.

If you don't use heroin for a period of time, you become sick.

All their body can think about is wanting more of the dope.

And on the night of December 31st, Sarah's cravings were raging.

She informed us that her mom came home from work.

She had been waiting for her mom to get home and wanted to use her mother's vehicle.

Her mother had told her no.

Dawn is adamant, I am not giving you my car keys.

I am not giving you money.

You are staying home.

You are not going out and buying drugs.

And this sends Sarah into a fit of rage because she is so dependent on the heroin just to function.

It was a grip that had a hold of her to the point where she snapped.

Sarah said that she had a hammer in the kitchen drawer.

She picked up.

Her mom's sitting in the living room area on a chair watching television with her back towards the kitchen.

She decided to get up on the kitchen counter, which was right behind where the love seat was sitting.

and that's when she struck her mom from behind in the head with the hammer.

Dawn tried to run out of the residence and she was grabbed by her hair.

She pushed her mother to the ground where she landed into the kitchen and continued to strike her with the hammer.

Dawn tells her daughter, Sarah, I'm sorry.

Sarah, I'm sorry.

You can take the car.

Just take it, Sarah.

Her mother was already bloody and had damage to her head.

She eventually drug her mother into the bathroom area and she used duct tape that was in the kitchen to duct tape her legs.

I guess she was afraid that maybe her mother was going to call for help.

Sarah says that she knew her two-year-old son was asleep in the other room and didn't want him to stumble on the scene.

Sarah decides to separate her son from what's going on, so she puts a baby gate up so he can stay on the opposite side of the beating.

Sarah said her mother was struggling, probably suffocating on her butt.

At that point in time, she felt sorry for her mother and she made the determination that she was going to choke her mother out.

There's so much blood everywhere that Sarah later says it was slippery and she was sliding around.

She had a tough time strangling her mother.

She's recounting these details as if she's telling you about a trip to the grocery store.

It was just a complete lack of remorse, just complete apathy, just very nonchalant.

According to Sarah, even after strangling her mother, she wasn't sure if Don was dead.

But she was so desperate for a fix that she didn't care.

18 blows into your head,

she wasn't going to survive.

I think that Sarah lost touch with reality.

She had the right amount of anger toward her mother, coupled with the fact that she needed her drugs.

I think everything worked together.

You know, she snapped.

She grabs her mom's car keys.

She grabs her mom's phone, money, and the boy, and they leave in Don's car.

Sarah says she then drove to the ATM and withdrew $600 from her mother's bank account, bought heroin, and checked her and her two-year-old son into a motel on the edge of town.

She would put cartoons on so he could sit on the bed and watch cartoons while she was shooting up in the bathroom.

They stayed there for a period of a couple days.

She continued to use her mother's credit card and debit card, making several withdrawals.

She also informed us that, you know, she had her mother's phone and that several co-workers, along with her mother's estranged husband, had left messages and that she responded back to them messages as though she was dawn so they wouldn't get suspicious.

After the three-day drug binge, Sarah goes to Walmart to buy cleaning supplies so she can go back to her mom's home and try to clean up some of the evidence of the crime.

Though Sarah says that when she and her son arrived back at the trailer, she couldn't finish the job.

She was so

affected by seeing her mother in there that she couldn't even use the bathroom.

She would actually use the bathroom in a bucket and throw away the waste in the yard.

Sarah says that when she finally ran out of her mom's money a few days later, she put her son in his his car seat and decided to rob a nearby bank.

Her main goal was to get drugs, and I think she could care less about being caught, getting caught.

She just wanted the drugs to support her habit.

And I think it was a relief for her to get this off of her chest,

but I can't really say that it was remorse.

She was just relieved to get this over with.

There was no tears, no crying.

It was a conversation.

When we arrived at Green Barracks, I charged Sarah with crimes of first degree murder, second degree murder, aggravated assault, recklessness and danger.

I thought maybe in my mind there was a drug debt, something like that.

And you begin to roll through those scenarios.

I didn't think that Sarah actually had done this.

I was just so shocked out of my mind.

Coming up, Sarah's defense team isn't going down without a fight.

You never would have thought that Sarah would have done something like that.

They said she was just out of her mind at the time.

The addictive qualities of this drug are, it's just, it's astronomical and it just takes a grip a person.

On October 31st, 2014, nearly a year after the murder of 51-year-old Dawn Wagner, her daughter, 26-year-old Sarah Verkotteran, is marched into a Pennsylvania courtroom for the first of several preliminary hearings.

She was in chains.

Her feet were shackled, her hands, and she sat down, and immediately she made eye contact with me, and she started crying.

I remember when state police brought Sarah in, she was so small.

She was so short short and so tiny.

And I just remember feeling very surprised that someone so innocent looking could be capable of the horrors that she's accused of committing.

It was surprising because you never would have thought that Sarah would have done something like that, especially to Dawn.

At the preliminary hearing, prosecutors argue that Dawn's brutal murder was premeditated and deserving of the death penalty.

Premeditated murder can be at the snap of a finger.

And you know, at that point in time, she made her made the decision to kill her mother.

The district attorney entered the police confession into evidence.

The court watched this confession in absolute shock at the detail that she was going into about her mother's murder, at her flippant attitude.

However, Sarah's defense attorney argues that his client was in the throes of a violent heroin withdrawal when she picked up a hammer on December 31st, 2013.

The addictive qualities of this drug are, it's just, it's astronomical and it just takes a grip a person like it did for Sarah.

She is addicted to heroin, and she is so desperately needing a fix that she's willing to do absolutely anything to get that fix, including killing her own mother.

Her defense attorney argues that Sarah's addiction prevented her from having the specific intent required to commit a first-degree premeditated crime, an aggravating circumstance required for a death penalty conviction in Pennsylvania.

I've talked to thousands of people, thousands that were dovesick.

None of them are bludgeoning their mother with a hammer.

You almost feel like there has to be some other type of rage inside of you or something else that would make you snap to do something like that.

Then, before her trial is scheduled to begin in March 2016, Sarah unexpectedly decides to plead guilty to all charges.

I was proud that she would take responsibility and admit what she did,

but my heart broke at the same time because I knew she just threw away any opportunity of ever, ever having any kind of life.

She will die in prison.

On April 19th, 2016, Sarah pleads guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for life in prison without the possibility of parole.

It was definitely a relief for the family members to

end everything right there.

Dawn's husband Larry offers a victim impact statement on behalf of the family.

I said that I'd never understand fully why, but that I loved her.

And that I'm sorry that I hadn't come to see her, but I was still working on forgiving her.

She wasn't supposed to say anything back to me, but she did.

She was saying she was sorry, and she was crying.

I feel bad for Larry.

He lost his wife, and he lost a

stepdaughter.

Now, as the drug epidemic grows across the country, Pennsylvania State Police hope that Sarah's story story can serve as a warning for others.

I think that her drug use made her evil.

I don't think she was an evil person prior to the drugs, but the drugs made her an evil person.

Sarah did this and there needs to be some sort of accountability.

And she's spending her life in prison.

But do I have to hate her?

That's my choice.

I don't have to hate her.

I could carry carry this around with me the rest of my life, but why would I want to do that?

Sarah Vercoteran is currently serving her time at the Cambridge Springs Women's Prison.

Sarah's son is living with his paternal grandmother.

It's all a light-hearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid.

We're your hosts, I'm Alina Urquhart, and I'm Ash Kelly.

And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.

The stories we cover are well researched.

Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group.

With a touch of humor.

Shout out to her.

And shout out to all my therapists out there.

There's been like eight of them.

A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing.

That motherfer is not real.

And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Way Back Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid.

Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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