A transgender Florida teenager was sentenced to 50 years behind bars after accepting a plea deal in the grisly 2024 slayings of her mother and her mom’s much-younger boyfriend.
Julia Egler, 18, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the killings, in which she lay in wait for the couple to arrive at their Palm Bay home — greeting them with a “welcome home” before opening fire with her mother’s .38 revolver and then staging the scene to look like a burglary.
The mom, Kelly McCollom, 38, and her boyfriend Matthew Szejnrok, 22, both died at the scene.
Egler, who was born female but wanted to transition to male, was charged with two counts of first-degree premeditated murder until the plea deal, which will see her eligible for parole in 25 years.
“I’m sorry,” she said during her sentencing Friday. “I’m haunted by grief every day. I have shown that I can be rehabilitated. Please give me a chance to reintegrate back into society.”
The teen confessed to killing the pair, saying she disapproved of her mom dating someone so much younger — and had “reached her boiling point” with her mom’s disapproval of her transgender identity, according to the affidavit.
After riddling her mom with bullets, she targeted Szejnrok, who fled to the bathroom and pleaded for his life. She shot him repeatedly until she ran out of bullets, then grabbed a kitchen knife and started stabbing him, bloodied and incapacitated, on the bathroom floor.
A mortally wounded Szejnrok “essentially asked [Egler] to take him out of his misery,” according to the affidavit, at which point she went into her mother’s room to retrieve another bullet, loaded it and shot him in the head.
She then called 911 and told the operator a man had broken into the home by smashing a sliding glass door with a hammer.
When asked if the alleged assailant brought the hammer, Egler claimed “it was just the house hammer. It was just by the back.”
But her flimsy cover story quickly fell apart, with her mustering only “Oh … it’s hard to remember” when asked what the home invader looked like.
Cops responding to the scene noticed glass on McCollum’s leg and Szejnrok’s phone, suggesting the glass was broken after they were killed.
They found the revolver outside Egler’s bedroom window, a bloody knife on the kitchen counter and bloody footprints that matched her shoes.
She confessed to the double slaying after she was brought in for questioning.
“Egler cited long-standing conflicts with her mother, including disagreements related to her gender transition, as well as disapproval of her mother’s relationship with Szejnrok, as motives for the crime,” said Palm Bay Police Lieutenant Virginia Kilmer.
Cops said the family had been tied to two different alleged abuse allegations, including an incident 11 years ago involving Egler’s biological father, while in the second, Szejnrok allegedly grabbed McCollom several times while they were arguing in public.
The charges were dropped.
Szejnrok’s brother, David, lives next door to where the killings took place, and was home at the time, telling investigators he thought the gunshots were fireworks.
“I was 75 feet away from my brother and had no idea he was fighting for his life,” David Szejnrok told the court.
“Her actions didn’t just take my brother, they ruined our home. There isn’t a sentence that will bring my brother back,” he said.
