Neb. Dad Who Smothered His Young Children Found Tucked into Bed and Said He'd 'Do It Again' Learns Fate
Emily Price, 5, and Theodore Price, 3, were found dead in 2021
Adam Price will spend the rest of his life in a Nebraska state prison facility.
Price, 38, was convicted in February of two counts of first-degree murder in the 2021 smothering deaths of his two children, Emily Price, 5, and Theodore Price, 3.
He was sentenced to life in prison on Monday, May 6, and transferred to the Reception and Treatment Center in Lincoln, Neb., according to his online inmate roster. There, he will be known by his six-digit Department of Correctional Services ID: 218419.
The section dedicated to parole dates was left blank on the online inmate information.
In Nebraska, first-degree murder convictions carry between life in prison and the death penalty, per state law. (Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty in the case.)
In closing arguments during his trial, prosecutors said that on the May 2021 day that Price killed his two young children, he spent the afternoon with them at a neighborhood park and also withdrew $1,500 from two ATMs as part of an escape plan he'd hatched after his marriage soured, WOWT previously reported. He also took the recycling out a day early.
Sarpy County Sheriff's Department via AP
Adam Price in May 2021 mugshot.Related: Father Charged After His 2 Young Kids Are Found Dead in Home: 'Sweetest, Most Loving Children'
On May 14, Price left the family home in Bellevue, Neb., and drove to California without the kids, the outlet reported, citing the eight-day trial.
Morgan Clark — a friend of the children’s mother who could not reach Price — found the children dead after checking in on them for their concerned mother, and told the jury she found the kids tucked into their beds as if they were asleep, KETV previously reported.
"Oh my God. She's cold. No, she's not. She's dead,” Clark said in the 911 call played in court and reported by the outlet. “Please send an ambulance. She's not breathing. She's dead. The little boy is dead, too. The little boy is dead, too. Please send help. Please.”
Within hours of that call, California police arrested Price and charged him with child abuse resulting in his children’s death.
Those charges were later upgraded to murder after Price admitted to a Bellevue detective that he had planned to kill his children, WOWT previously reported.
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“Killing the kids was more about you than killing the kids?” the detective later testified to asking Price in that interview, per the outlet.
“Yes … it was not a spur of the moment thing,” Price responded.
When the detective asked him if he “could see doing the day over again?” Price told her: “I would do it again.”
It was not the first time that the father had confessed to killing his children.
Prior to his arrest, on May 15, Price walked into St. James Church in San Francisco and told a priest – who later testified at the murder trial – that he had killed his son and daughter.
“The testimony of the priest was definitely a big part of it,” juror Diana Thomas said in an interview with WOWT after the verdict. “But then just all the evidence put together, just the things he did beforehand — going to the bank, putting out the trash early, and then leaving. It pretty much felt like there really wasn’t another person that possibly could have done it.”
If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
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