‘Transitioning’ teen arrested in Florida after faking home invasion, killing mom and mom’s boyfriend: police

A 16-year-old girl who had been transitioning to the opposite sex, per police, was arrested over the weekend in Palm Bay, Florida after allegedly killing her mother and her mother's boyfriend. Julia Egler was subsequently charged with two counts of premeditated first-degree murder for the deaths of Kelley McCollom and Matthew Szejnrok.

Egler initially staged a home invasion in an attempt to convince police she was simply an innocent bystander to a grisly double homicide, but later came clean and admitted that she had killed them. The teen cited disagreements with her mother over "her transition," claiming she "was not very accepting."


Suspect in 2019. Source: Facebook

As WKMG reports, shortly after midnight on Sunday police pulled up to an address on Bencher Road after Egler herself called 911 to report a home invasion. The teen told officers she had been in her room when a man broke in and attacked the pair. She proceeded to show evidence she'd planted, however eventually investigators caught on and took her in for questioning.

Egler reportedly said she used a .38 caliber revolver that she stole from her mother's room to shoot her and Szejnrok. The former died instantly, while the latter was still alive. After running out of bullets, Egler grabbed a chef's knife and stabbed him again, before he asked her to reload the gun and shoot him dead.

According to WFTV, at the station, she confessed that it was she who had committed the murders, noting that the attack was the culmination of "many disagreements in the previous weeks." She told police that she "was not happy with the fact that [McCollom] was not very accepting of her transition, and she also did not like that [McCollom] was dating [Szejnrok] who was 22 years old."

Egler was transported to a juvenile detention center, where she remains in custody.