WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT: Karen Slattery, 14, was babysitting two children when she was brutally attacked and stabbed to death by killer Duane Owen in June 1984 in Boca Raton, Florida
In a chilling case from 1984, an innocent 14-year-old girl met a horrifying end when a deranged killer broke into the house where she was babysitting two children.
Karen Slattery’s murder was one of two high-profile cases committed by the murderer Duane Owen. The young girl, who was a freshman at high school, had a promising future ahead of her.
She was a popular babysitter and a rising star in diving at Pope John Paul High, with plans to try out for the U.S. team.
The teenager, full of life and potential, had just had her braces removed in March when her life was tragically cut short. While looking after two children, aged seven and three, Owen sliced through a bedroom screen at the children’s home and confronted Karen in the kitchen.
At 10pm, she made a phone call to her mother, but by 12:30am, the parents of the children she was babysitting discovered her lifeless body in their home. The intruder had raped Karen and brutally stabbed her 18 times, while the other children were left unharmed, reports the Express.
When the appeals process began, Owen claimed officers had not properly informed him of his rights, leading to a new trial in 1999. By this time, he claimed to be “insane” and stated that on the night he murdered Karen, he was searching for hormones to transition into a woman.
Despite his pleas, the jury didn’t believe him and sentenced him to death. He appealed the verdict, arguing his lawyer failed to present evidence of the trauma he experienced as a child.
Owen’s mother, an alleged alcoholic, died when he was just 11, and his father committed suicide two years later. He confessed to drinking and taking drugs from the tender age of nine.
“It was the only house I know to have beer delivered by a beer truck,” a neighbour of Owen’s parents told the court. Since then, as of 2017, Owen has appealed the Slattery verdict again following a Florida Supreme Court ruling on death sentences that did not occur from a unanimous jury recommendation.
Other murders
Just two months after his savage murder of Karen Slattery in May 1984, Owen continued his reign of terror, claiming another innocent life after breaking into a Boca Raton home. 38 year old Georgianna Worden woke up to a hammer crashing down on her head, as Owen struck her four more times.
Court documents revealed she could have been alive for up to an hour after suffering the first brutal blow. It was her 13-year-old daughter who discovered her body in the morning before she was due to leave for school.
His victims didn’t stop there. Two more women in Boca Raton were attacked with blunt objects in their own homes, one with a plumber’s wrench and the other with a clothing iron, although they were fortunate enough to survive the assault.
As part of the investigation into Worden’s murder, police matched a fingerprint to Owen, found on a book on her bedside table. Despite being represented by renowned defence attorneys Michael Salnick and Barry Krischer, Owen was sentenced in 1986 for Worden’s murder, the same sentence he received in 1985.
Despite the mounting evidence, his court journey spanned decades, following his initial death sentence in 1985.