A teenage girl accused of killing her mother and attempting to kill her stepfather covered her mouth and giggled as her trial began.
Carly Gregg was only 14 when she allegedly shot and killed her mother in their Mississippi family home in March.
She then allegedly lured her stepfather into coming home, after which she shot him twice and fled.
According to police, she later called a friend and asked if she had ever seen a dead body before, then led them to her mother’s collapsed body.
Gregg was offered a plea deal of 40 years in prison, but she declined. Her legal team is now pleading insanity.
On Thursday, as the fourth day of the trial got underway, Gregg was caught on livestream trying to suppress a fit of laughter.
A teenage girl on trial accused of murdering her mother and attempting to murder her stepfather giggled and tried to cover her mouth as the fourth day of the trial began
On Thursday, as the fourth day of the trial got underway, Gregg was caught on the livestream trying to suppress a fit of giggling
At the time, Gregg was watching a member of her defense team scribble something on a piece of paper. It is unclear what the note said.
Then she smiled and covered her mouth with her hand.
There was no audio available on the livestream to hear what she said immediately after the incident.
Gregg is accused of shooting her mother and trying to lure her stepfather home with a text message from her mother’s phone on March 19.
Rebecca Kirk, a licensed professional counselor who saw Gregg nine times in the weeks leading up to the alleged crime, testified Thursday about the teen’s behavior during the sessions.
On February 14, just weeks before the shooting, Gregg said she planned to read Crime and Punishment.
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1886 novel is about a Russian nihilist who, in Kirk’s words, “is highly intelligent… and who obsessively thinks of planning the murder of a woman.”
The character comes to the conclusion that special people have the right to kill others for the good of society. He kills a pawnbroker with an axe.
Ultimately, he is sentenced to eight years in a Russian labor camp and declared insane.
“When he was in the camp he showed no remorse and he didn’t think what he had done was wrong. He thought the woman deserved it,” Kirk told the court.
The defense told the court that Gregg never read the book.
Kirk said Gregg was a very talented student and patient who “had been recognized for her intelligence many times in her life.”
“She was proud of that, but she also had a genuine love of learning,” she told the court.
“She was gifted, that’s a clear fact. Sometimes when you’re so gifted and different from others, you might feel lonely and a little bit more isolated.”
Raskolnikov, the murderer at the center of Crime and Punishment, is a poor student convinced of his own genius until he develops a nihilistic moral theory that he believes gives him the right to kill his victim.
Gregg’s mother, 40-year-old math teacher Ashley Smylie, was fatally shot in the face
This week, shocking footage was shown in a Mississippi courtroom of Carly Gregg casually walking through her kitchen.
The court heard on Wednesday from psychiatrist Dr Andrew Clark, who said he believes Gregg had a “blackout” lasting as long as 90 minutes on the day of the alleged offence.
But he also acknowledged that someone in Gregg’s situation would have a motive to “fake” a mental illness.
Dr Clark told the court that Gregg had told him she had been suffering from “auditory hallucinations” for years before the alleged crime, but that the voices in her head had never “ordered” her to do anything.
Gregg had confided to Dr. Clark that she had started smoking marijuana several times a week and that she was afraid her mother would find out, the court heard.
The court heard she had been using marijuana until at least the day before the alleged incident.
She was also prescribed Lexapro and Zoloft, both medications used to treat mood disorders.
She is charged with murder, attempted murder and tampering with evidence and, if found guilty, faces life imprisonment.
The court had previously seen footage of Gregg walking through her kitchen in March and texting a friend shortly after shots were fired.
Gregg is seen in the kitchen, wearing a Nirvana T-shirt, pacing back and forth down the hallway.
She disappears from view for a moment, but then returns with something behind her back and looks into the kitchen.
Gregg then walked off camera in the opposite direction, just before three gunshots rang out.
After the first shot we heard a woman screaming, then the room went silent.
Moments later, Gregg was back on camera, calmly sitting on a stool by the kitchen counter, texting on her phone as her two dogs looked on.
Gregg’s mother, 40-year-old math teacher Ashley Smylie, was fatally shot in the face.
Her stepfather then received a text message from Smylie’s phone, which said, “When will you be home, honey?”
When Heath arrived home, police say Gregg shot him, hitting him once in the shoulder.
The court heard Heath grabbed Gregg’s gun before she could shoot him again, prompting her to flee.
According to police, she then texted one of her friends asking them to come to her house because of an “emergency.”
When the friend arrived, Gregg allegedly asked her “if she had ever seen a dead body before” and led the witness to her mother’s body.
The now 15-year-old, who was 14 at the time of her alleged crimes, has turned down a 40-year plea deal and her legal team is instead pursuing an insanity defense
Prosecutors allege Gregg then used her mother’s phone to text her stepfather Heath in an attempt to lure him home
She walked away from the camera again in the opposite direction, moments before three gunshots rang out
Gregg’s stepfather, who survived the attack, testified in court that he found his wife covered in blood when he came home.
He said Gregg had once been a “sweet little girl” but that day she looked like she had “seen a demon.”
‘As I opened the door to the kitchen, the gun went off in my face before the door was even open three to four inches.
“The gun flashed in my face. It went off two more times, but my hand was on the gun after the first shot and I turned it away from Carly,” he said.
Gregg is charged with murder, attempted murder and evidence tampering. The trial continues.
