IN FIRST PUBLIC TESTIMONY, KATHERINE ALLBRIGHT ACCUSED OF HIDING SARA PACKER ON DAY OF ALLEGED "SUICIDE PACT"
Timeline questioned for 'suicide pact' in Grace Packer case
By Laurie Mason Schroeder / Of The Morning Call
Posted Oct 1, 2018 at 8:21 PM
The woman described by prosecutors as being in a “polyamorous” relationship with Sara Packer and Jacob Sullivan testified Monday in Bucks County Court that she was not aware the couple planned to commit suicide as police closed in on them for the rape and murder of 14-year-old Grace Packer.
Katherine Allbright, 40, described coming home to the one-bedroom Horsham apartment she shared with Sara Packer and Sullivan on Dec. 30, 2016, and immediately seeing Sullivan sprawled unconscious in the bedroom doorway. She called 911, she told Bucks County Judge Diane Gibbons, and spoke to a detective who arrived shortly after the ambulance that took Sullivan to a nearby hospital.
More than an hour after the paramedics and detective left, Allbright said, she found Sara Packer sitting in the apartment shower. Sara Packer was “barely conscious,” Allbright testified, but was able to walk to Allbright’s car with her help. Allbright said she drove Sara Packer to a hospital.
“I was in shock,” Allbright said.
She denied knowing that the pair was planning to commit suicide, and said she could recall few details of what transpired.
“My brain, in order to protect me, has blocked a lot of it out,” Allbright said. “I’ve been through a lot in the past two years.”
Allbright’s testimony, delivered during a pretrial hearing , is the first time she has spoken publicly since Sara Packer and Sullivan were charged with killing Grace Packer. Prosecutors say Sullivan raped and strangled Grace on July 8, 2016, in a rented Richland Township home he shared with Sara Packer, 44, Grace’s adoptive mother.
The pair is scheduled to stand trial in January. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Sullivan and say they have not ruled it out for Sara Packer.
Sullivan’s lawyer, Chief Public Defender Christina King, pressed Allbright for details about her client’s suicide attempt. King noted that a full five minutes passed after Allbright got home before she dialed 911. A neighbor’s security camera recorded her car arriving, and 911 logs showed the time of the call.
“Weren’t you indeed hiding Sara in the bathroom at that time?” King asked.
“No,” Allbright replied.
Allbright previously testified before a grand jury, and will likely be called as a trial witness. She has not been charged with a crime.
Prosecutors say Sullivan first confessed to raping and murdering Grace to employees at Abington Hospital, where he was recovering from ingesting 13 different kinds of medication. When talking to police, several nurses described “feeling ill, losing work” and said “they vomited” after hearing Sullivan’s words, Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub said in court Monday.
Sullivan’s attorneys have argued in pretrial motions that portions of the nurses’ statements could unfairly sway a jury when the case goes to trial. Lawyers on both sides reached an agreement that prosecution witnesses will be instructed to avoid talking about the emotional impact Sullivan’s words had on them.
Sara Packer is accused of helping Sullivan plan the killing. Prosecutors say she watched Sullivan rape the child and bought the saw used to dismember her body.
The couple hid Grace’s body in the attic of the rented home for months, packed in cat litter, prosecutors contend in court records. After a detective asked about the missing teen in October, Sara Packer and Sullivan dismembered the girl’s body and dumped it in Luzerne County, where hunters discovered the remains, court records say.
At the time of the couple’s arrest, Weintraub said Sara Packer and Sullivan expressed hatred toward Grace and that her death was the culmination of a rape-and-murder fantasy the couple shared.
Gibbons must rule on numerous pretrial issues before the trial. Sara Packer and Sullivan are being held in jail without bail.
In court Monday, King disclosed that she had interviewed Sara Packer at the county jail before she knew that she would be assigned to represent Sullivan. The conversation was placed on the record after Sara Packer’s court-appointed attorney confirmed that his client was waiving her attorney-client privilege. King said she wanted to avoid any ethical dilemmas that might arise.
King testified that she introduced herself to Sara Packer and asked if she had any questions.
“Is he dead?” King recalled Sara Packer asking. “Did he make a statement? That wasn’t the plan.”
