Tylar Witt plotted to kill her own mother, Joanne Witt, with the help of her older boyfriend, Steven Colver, after their relationship was uncovered and they were forbidden to see each other
Tylar Witt lived with her single mother, Joanne Witt, in an upscale neighbourhood of El Dorado Hills in California.
Joanne, 47, who worked as an assistant engineer for the county’s Department of Transportation, strived to ensure her only child had everything. She paid for riding lessons, and the two loved spending evenings cooking and watching movies together, but then their relationship became fractured.
Tylar, 14, who was about to enter her freshman year at Oak Ridge High School, met her much older boyfriend, Steven Colver, 19, and said she saw them as modern-day Romeo and Juliet. After her distraught mother threatened to have Colver charged with statutory rape, the duo concluded that they would be doomed to die like Shakespeare’s lovers.
However, in a shocking turn of events, Joanna was stabbed to death on 11 June 2009. And it was her own daughter and her boyfriend who carried out the horrendous murder – but what led to that fateful day?
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Tylar and Colver first met in December 2008 at a local coffee shop. The teen immediately made an impact on the lovestruck Tylar, who soon became obsessed with Colver, being so much older than her friends and the boys she knew.
They soon began a sexual relationship, as well as using marijuana, cocaine, and ecstasy, engaging in wild behaviour far beyond Tylar’s years. Around this time, Joanne began looking for a lodger to help her pay the bills and mortgage on their gated community home.
Joanne was introduced to Colver and was fooled into thinking he was gay, and was persuaded to allow him to move into their home. It wasn’t long before trusting Joanne discovered the truth – that her ‘gay’ lodger was having sex with her underage daughter.
Joanne found Tylar naked in Colver’s room. Furious, she threw him out and called the police.
She filed a complaint against Colver for statutory rape and agreed not to pursue charges when Tylar promised to end the relationship. However, months later, HR found proof that the couple were still seeing each other – in Tylar’s diary, which detailed their intimate encounters.
Joanne turned the diary over to the detectives and broke the news to her daughter. Tylar was full of rage at her mother and scared that her lover would go to prison. This is when things took a horrifying turn.
On the morning of Monday, 15 June 2009, Joanne’s parents, Judi and Norb Witt, got a disturbing call from Joanne’s place of work to say she had failed to show up for the second day running. It was very unlike the hard-working mum.
Her boss said he’d called the police as he revealed to Judi and Norb how Joanne had confided in him that she and Tylar had been having some problems. The couple lived just two miles away from their daughter and granddaughter’s home and were there within minutes.
Police searched the home and tragically found Joanne dead in her bedroom. She had been stabbed 20 times.
Later in the murder trial, prosecutor Lisette Suder described a “very, very, very gruesome scene.” The court heard there was a wound that almost decapitated Joanne.
Authorities believe the murder occurred late at night on Thursday, 11 June 2009, after Joanne went to bed. Prosecutors said a plan was hatched by the pair to kill Joanne, so they could be together.
That night, Tylar let Colver into the home after they had made sure Joanne was asleep. The pair left the scene together, believing they would get away with their crime.
Upon initial discovery of the body, Tylar was nowhere to be seen; investigators feared that she too had been abducted or killed. However, details about Joanne’s complaint against her daughter’s boyfriend soon emerged, and the police realised they were searching for their main suspect.
Tylar and Colver’s escape attempt came to an end when they confided in a friend about their crime. The friend handed over the murder weapon to the police and informed them that the pair had confessed.
The couple were apprehended and charged with murder, and then the once smitten lovers turned on each other.
Tylar’s first-degree murder charge was downgraded to second-degree murder after she agreed to testify against her ex-boyfriend. She told the court that Colver had stabbed her mother with a kitchen knife while she stood outside the door, covering her ears and humming.
Colver, also known by his nickname “Boston”, painted a chilling picture of the night in question. He recalled how Tylar greeted him at the door, revealing, “She was holding a kitchen knife and there was a red stain on her right pant leg. I was shocked. She said, ‘Boston, I did it. I finally did it. My mum’s gone forever’.”
He further claimed that Tylar confessed to committing the act “for them”.
Tylar testified that the teens had ascended the stairs of the home she shared with her mother to commit the killing together – Colver with a chef’s knife from his restaurant job and she with a kitchen knife from the house.
During Tylar’s trial, Judge Daniel Proud told her she’d robbed her family of a mother “who dedicated her life to you”, adding, “Joanne Witt loved her daughter. She was a protective and caring mother.
“She tried her best. I’m sorry, Ms. Witt, because the person who loved you more than anyone in the world is gone.”
Tylar’s grandfather, Norb, believes Colver manipulated her. “He had a 14-year-old that looked at him as god. I mean, he had total control over her,” Norb explained.
“We knew that drugs were involved. We knew that a lot of drugs were involved. … They were into marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine. What does that do to someone’s mind?”
Colver was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.
On August 12 2011, Tylar was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder. She was granted parole in 2022 and released a year later.