Before her torturous death, Grace Packer grew up in a hotbed of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, according to three children fostered by the adoptive mother who now stands charged, along with her boyfriend, of killing and dismembering the 14-year-old girl as part of a barbaric rape-murder fantasy.
Police say Sara Packer, a former county adoptions supervisor, watched as her boyfriend, Jacob Sullivan, beat and raped Grace, who was then bound, gagged and left to die in a sweltering attic. Returning the next day and finding Grace still alive, Sullivan strangled her, court documents say. They stored her body in cat litter for months, then hacked it up and dumped it in a remote area where hunters found it in October, police said.
In separate interviews with The Associated Press, the now-grown former foster daughters, all of whom lived with Sara Packer several years before Grace’s rape and murder, said Sara abused her adopted daughter and clearly favored Grace’s biological brother, who was also adopted.
“Her favorite child, and you could see it plain as day, had always been Gracie’s brother,” said Jade Tenezaca, now 27. “She was more demanding on Gracie to be normal. But Gracie is not normal. Gracie had a learning disability.”
Tenezaca recounted an episode that, in hindsight, seems chilling. Sara was watching the TV crime drama “CSI” once and casually mentioned that if she ever killed someone, she'd dismember the body and burn the pieces to ash, Tenezaca said.
“It kind of freaked me out,” she said.
Sara and her husband at the time, David Packer, fostered dozens of children before David was arrested in 2010 and sent to prison for sexually assaulting Grace and a 15-year-old foster daughter at their home in Allentown, about an hour north of Philadelphia.
Sara Packer lost her job as an adoptions supervisor for nearby Northampton County in April 2010, and she was barred from taking in any more foster children. But she wasn’t charged with a crime related to her husband’s abuse, and Grace and her brother continued to live in the home.
Pennsylvania’s child-welfare agency is investigating the circumstances around Grace’s death.
The abused foster daughter, now 25, told the AP that the sexual abuse by David Packer began when she was 15, shortly after she moved into the home, and went on for years. The AP is withholding the name of the woman because she is a victim of sexual abuse.
David moved the woman to a third-floor bedroom near the one he shared with Sara, she said. He would tie her to the bedpost and leave her there all night, she said. He would tie her to a chair and gag her. He dressed her in revealing outfits and made her go on a diet. He sexually abused her.
