Kate was always given credit for slitting the throats from ear to ear.

What kind of parent will ask their child to kill. Children cannot say no to a parent that wants them to kill. They compared her to Charles Manson in the Wild West. The family business is murder. Kate was always given credit for slitting the throats from ear to ear. A terrifying mother has a deadly request. Murder is a family affair it runs in the bloodlines. On a quiet April day in 2001 Greg Hyman visits his sick father. Something is very wrong, the house has been emptied. Korea his grandmother suffering from Alzheimer's has been abandoned, slowly starving, she had survived by eating newspapers, the only thing she could reach.

Greg's father has vanished, there was a brain matter on the walls, on the ceiling, it was a crime of great brutality and ignorance. The city of Everett Washington State, Barbara Opel is a 38 year old single mom struggling with family life. Barbara Opel and her children had lived virtually everywhere for short periods of time. Notices of eviction were as common as junk mail. Barbara Opel is notorious in the local community. She was more than well known for screaming at her children. she was almost famous for it. A loud obnoxious screaming, domineering woman she had a very dominant personality and was also highly manipulative. Her eldest child is 13 year-old Heather, she does what she can to avoid her mother.

Heather was under her mother's spell but her mother was a bully. She was under her thumb, she was abused. When children grow up in a household with one parent and that parent is constantly yelling at them and abusing them emotionally and physically, it's pretty tough for that kid to not go along with whatever mom wants them to do. They do it to keep peace in the family and to not get hit. The Opel family's luck changes when Barbara meets 64 year old retiree Jerry Hyman. He felt bad about her living conditions and asked her if she liked to move in with her children into his basement and care for his elderly mother, who was 89 and wheelchair-bound.

Jerry Hyman has cancer but his mother is his top priority. He didn't have that long to live, he wanted to take good care of her. He was willing to sacrifice his own personal well-being to take care of his mother. Jerry Hyman was generous to Barbara and her family. He provided money gifts to them for the holidays. Barbara Opel has only one person's well-being in mind, her own. She discovered he had about 40,000 dollars in the bank and somewhere along the lines of that first year she began to devise a plan to murder him. However, she won't do the killing. She wants a gang of children to do it for her.

The leader will be her daughter, Heather's boyfriend 17-year old Jeff groped. Jeff groped was a rather athletic speed skater who lived in the area and he was selected by 13 year old, Heather. Barbara encourage that relationship because she wanted Jeff to be the ringleader of the group of young murderers, who were ultimately going to kill Jerry Hyman. She decided that one of the ways to do this is to get him on her side. She was to have her daughter sleep with him. After using her own daughter as sexual bait, Barbara puts her plan in motion. When they came out of the bedroom, Heather's mother sat him down for a heart-to-heart talk. It wasn't about safe sex, it was murder.

She wanted to enlist Jeff groped in the plan to kill Jerry Hyman. There's another gang member Barbara has in mind, her daughter Heather. Barbara promised Heather both money and a dirt bike. In her diary, Heather had entries that she was gonna get a dirt bike out of this killing and she was excited about that. For the price of a dirt bike, Heather Opal is prepared to murder a 64 year old retiree. Barbra Opel exercised an uncommon degree of dominance over her children. In a suburban basement a gang of children are waiting to kill. All of the young killers in this case came from chaotic family backgrounds.

The warmth, love and connection normal families have between parent and child simply was not there for any of the people involved in this murder. Therefore, murder for them was pretty easy. The only adult present is the one pushing them towards this murder. Barbara wants retiree Jerry Hyman beaten to death. Ready and willing to kill is Barbara's 13 year old daughter, Heather. Heather was an excellent student, sports star well-liked, well behaved. No one would ever suspect that a girl such as Heather could commit such a horrible crime. Heather may have failed to develop a strong sense of self because of the overwhelming domination and control of her mother. This murder would never have happened without Barbara Opel putting these kids up to it.

When Jerry Hyman arrives home on April 13th 2001. The team of young killers lie in wait. When Jerry walked in the door, he was immediately attacked, knocked to the floor. He cried out why are you doing this, why are you doing this to me? He never received an answer and there is no rational answer for it. They beat this old man to death. Jerry Hyman was being murdered, his 89 year old mother who is in the late stages of Alzheimer's disease, was sitting in a wheelchair just a few feet away. It is believe she witnessed her son being brutally killed. In fact, Mr. hymens blood was found splattered all over the side of her wheelchair.

While the murder of Jerry was taking place, Barbara Opel was acting as a one-woman cheerleading section from the basement. I don't think it's an accident that Barbara hid out in the basement and had these children do her murderous deed for her. She did that on purpose. She is smart enough to know they might get caught and she could always say well I had nothing to do with that. The kids did it. That's how heartless this woman is. Then Barbara urges her own daughter up the stairs, Heather Opel who had just turned 14 years of age stabbed at Jerry Hyman numerous times. Afterwards Heather was heard saying, by the others that was fun, let's do it again.

There was a great deal of blood following the bludgeoning and stabbing of Jerry Hyman. Barbara had her daughter clean up the brains in the blood from the floor. Jerry hymen’s body is dumped in a nearby forest. Barbara has no plans for what to do next. Basically, she wanted Mr. Hyman dead, had wanted his money and wanted other people to do the murder, so she could somehow keep her hands clean. That's as far as she went. A credit-card trail soon leads to the arrest of Barbara and her family. The children who obeyed their mother out of blood loyalty are now her undoing. Barbara denied everything but once they got to the kids, the game was up.

The children began to give up an incriminating detail here and there. It was finally the youngest Tiffany, who broke the case and said Jerry's dead. Young people talk, they don't take direction well and they're easily frightened. It was probably the dumbest thing Barbara did in the commission of this murder. On trial for murder she tries to blame the crime on her daughter but the jury finds Barbara Opel guilty and gives her life in jail. Not only did Barbara lack empathy for her victim, a helpless old man. She lacked empathy for her daughter and was willing to throw her under the prison bus so that she could escape. Heather opal pleads guilty to murder.

It was a difficult trial, difficult moment to view a distressing plea. An innocent girl who looked every bit of 12 and 13 years old was convicted as an adult murderer and sent off to an adult prison for 22 years. With mother and daughter in separate prisons, the ties of blood are still powerful to this day. Heather does not see her mother as being evil. The dominance over Heather by her mother is absolutely incredible. Heather defended her mother to the very end. It wasn't that Barbara opal could do no wrong in Heather's eyes, it was that Barbara opal could do all the wrongs she wanted and it was okay.