March 13, 2018
Source/Bucks County District Attorney's Office
The body of Grace Packer, 14, left, a student at Abington Junior High School, was found in northeastern Pennsylvania on Oct. 31, 2016. Her mother, Sara Packer, right, pleaded not guilty to 11 felony charges, including criminal homicide, in the death of her adopted daughter.
A court-appointed administrator will handle the estate of Grace Packer, the 14-year-old Abington Township girl who was allegedly killed and dismembered by her adoptive mother.
That ruling was made by a Montgomery County court official who decided that neither Packer's biological parents nor the adoptive grandparents can become administrators of the girl’s estate, the Allentown Morning Call reported.
Rose and Rodney Hunsicker, the teen's biological parents, sought to be named administrators so they could sue the social service agencies that placed Grace with Sara Packer, the woman charged with abusing and killing her, their attorney said, the newspaper reported.
The court official wrote last week that the couple couldn’t request Grace’s estate because their parental rights had been terminated before her adoption. The official ruled that Grace’s estate couldn’t go to her adoptive grandparents because of a potential conflict of interest with their daughter’s trial.
Police charged Sara Packer and her boyfriend, Jacob Sullivan, both of Horsham, Montgomery County, with the rape and murder of Grace in July 2016 in Richland Township, Bucks County. Authorities allege they hid the girl's body in an attic for months before dismembering her and dumping her body in rural northeastern Pennsylvania.
Jacob Sullivan, 45, of Horsham Township, is charged with the 2016 murder and rape of Grace Packer, a 14-year-old Ardsley girl who was the adopted daughter of Sullivan's girlfriend. The trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 17 in Bucks County Court.
Packer, a former adoptions supervisor, adopted Grace when she was three years old. The girl reportedly had been abused or neglected in at least prior three homes during her life.
During an Abington community remembrance of Grace, she was recalled as a girl with a kind heart, who looked out for and befriended the lonely kids in school. She regularly ate lunch with a boy with autism at Abington Junior High School.
Her favorite things included butterflies, the colors purple and pink, and signing "Gracie" with a heart in place of the dot.
