Past November the bodies of two young girls Nicole Elisabeth and Jasmine Jean Snyder, were discovered in countryside of Pennsylvania in an awful state. Now their mother has admitted that she along with her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s parents callously famished and tortured them deliberately.
32-year-old Marie Snyder revealed while appearing in court that how she and 26-year-old Echo Butler would frequently refuse to give food to the girls. Girl’s emaciated bodies were discovered in a narrow grave in Hepburn Township, Pennsylvania.
Snyder said that the girls were being starved and beaten every day and she pronounced how she didn’t give her daughters any food or water for two weeks in May 2016. She further reveals that Echo would grasp their throats so they couldn’t respire and choke them until their eyes would roll back into their heads.
The girls were last seen in 2015 and authorities threw an inquiry into their vanishing in September 2021 after being tipped off about Snyder’s 7-year-old son not being registered in school. This info provoked authorities to visit Snyder’s Williamsport home.
During this meeting, they observed the nonappearance of Snyder’s daughters. When asked about it, the mother lied saying the girls were staying with a friend and that they were being home-schooled. Red flags were raised after child welfare officials were incapable to discover them. Consequently, they informed the matter to law enforcement and enlisted them to carry out a search warrant at the home. On probing their home, police found Nicole and Jasmine’s bodies, who were 6 and 4 at the time of their death.
Echo’s parents were also intimated by authorities after they learned that the duo lived in the same rented home as Echo and Snyder and supposedly assisted them to not only starve the kids but also hide proof from police.
All four were charged with offenses, while Echo faces first-degree homicide charges. Meanwhile, her father has been charged with two counts of risking a child and obstacle of child abuse cases and his wife faces a third-degree murder charge. Synder too has been charged with first-degree murder and she chose to waive her preliminary hearing to testify for the trial.
As per District Attorney Ryan C. Gardner, Synder wished to do something right for her girls after having failed them when they were still alive. Seemingly, the mom did call 911 but Echo and Michele taught her to hang up before the dispatched could answer the call. When the dispatcher rang back, Snyder said that the call was a slipup.
She revealed how Echo excavated a shallow grave to bury her daughter, Nicole also used mothballs to cover up the smell that would come from decay. After her death, they firstly treated Jasmine fine but then in August 2017, they starved her to such a degree that she became visibly bony and only weighed five pounds at the time of her death.
Jasmine was buried next to her sister and Echo and Michele told Snyder to tell people that she had gone to live with their father. They even charred the girls’ possessions. The case carries on as all four perpetrators are being held without bond and they have pleaded not guilty.
