Police: Teen stabbed, strangled mother to death, then watched TV before calling 911

Jacob Taliaferro was still talking on the phone with the 911 dispatcher when the police pulled up this home in Palmyra, Penn., early Monday morning.

The dispatcher told Taliaferro, 17, to walk out of the house through the front door.

He did. When he got outside officers made him lay face down on the ground.

What they found inside the house has left Taliaferro’s neighbors and friends reeling.

According to the Lebanon Daily News, blood on the floor led officers to a bedroom where they found Taliaferro’s mother dead with a large laceration on her chest and more blood on the floor.

Police say that Taliaferro stabbed Lorrie Ann Demko with a kitchen knife then strangled her to death with a piece of rope.

Then he watched TV, took a shower and called 911 to report he killed his mother.

The district attorney described it as a “brutal” crime.

“It's horrible. Her death had to be horrible and to open her eyes and see her son doing this to her had to be horrible,” neighbor Deborah Herbe told PennLive.

Demko was “an amazing woman” who would have done anything for anybody, neighbor Chris Bailey-Wolfe told the Daily News.

“My daughter used to hang out with her sometimes and they would do each other’s nails and stuff, and all the kids on the street would go swimming at her house during the summer. She was like the Mother of the Year for this street.”

Neighbors and friends said Taliaferro, who reportedly left high school to be home-schooled, often got upset with his mom “for no good reason,” sometimes using a dresser to block his bedroom door to keep her out.

“He was saying that he didn’t like his mom anymore,” Taliaferro’s friend, Bradley Hess, told the newspaper. “He said he wished he didn’t have her as a mom – stupid things like that.”

Bradley’s mother, Melissa Hess, had known the family for years.

“I never would have dreamed that Jacob could do this,” she told the Daily News.

“I don’t even know what I’d say to Jacob right now. I’m so angry at him for taking such a wonderful person away from everybody.

“He didn’t just take her away from us, he took her away from all the other children in the neighborhood who thought of her as a mom.”

Taliaferro was charged with criminal homicide as an adult and arraigned Monday morning, according to WGAL in Lancaster, Penn. He is in Lebanon County prison without bail.

District Attorney David Arnold told PennLive that Demko’s death was a “brutal” crime. He did not offer a motive but said he didn’t believe drugs were involved.

“I don’t believe mental health played a substantial role,” Arnold said, adding, “when you do something like this, obviously something has gone a little wrong in your life.”

This story was originally published June 8, 2016 at 9:24 AM with the headline "Police: Teen stabbed, strangled mother to death, then watched TV before calling 911."