PASADENA -- Two teenage girls are accused of stabbing a 75-year-old man to death in a robbery that netted them just $15, and police say the mother of one of the teens helped put them up to it.
Dannette R. Gillespie, 38, gave knives to her 15-year-old daughter and Vanessa Anne Ocampo, 19, then waited in the back seat of their car while the teens robbed and killed Eugene Palma, according to a probable cause warrant.
All three were charged with capital murder Friday. It was not immediately clear whether they had attorneys.
Palma, a bar owner, was found stabbed several times in the driveway of his suburban Houston home Wednesday. He did not know the women, Pasadena police said.
Ocampo told police the three had been looking for someone to rob that morning, according to the warrant.
"He would've given them money -- that's the crazy thing," Kim Nawrot, a bartender at Palma's bar, told the Houston Chronicle. "He was the kind of guy that would've given anyone the shirt off of his back."
Gillespie and her daughter, who is not being identified because she is a juvenile, were arrested in Pasadena. Ocampo was arrested in San Antonio. They were being held without bail.
Ocampo told investigators they went to the bar and followed Palma home when he left. Gillespie handed knives to her daughter and Ocampo and "encouraged them to commit the robbery," police said.
Gillespie's daughter and Ocampo ran to Palma's garage and stabbed him several times, then went through his pockets and car in search of money, and Ocampo took $15, according to the document.
Officials say Gillespie helped get rid of the knives. A palm print on the driver's- side door of Palma's car led police to the women, authorities said.
RSS
Mobile
Daily Emails
Twitter
Facebook
