Thomas Steven Sanders Guilty | #Louisiana

Lexis Roberts, at age 10

Suellen Roberts

“There wasn’t any family in court for the verdict.”

“The jury took a little more than an hour Monday afternoon to come up with that verdict. The penalty phase is scheduled to start Tuesday, September 16, 2014.”

GUILTY: Sanders now facing death penalty

Man who was declared dead 20 years ago is found guilty of murdering his girlfriend’s 12-year-old daughter

Roberts’ skeletal remains were found off a gravel trail in rural Louisiana in October 2010. The body of her mother, Suellen Roberts, was found later in Arizona. Sanders confessed to killing both.

Prosecutor Bill Flanagan said Sanders shot the girl’s mother, Suellen Roberts, on a trip all three took to a wildlife park near the Grand Canyon, then drove Lexis Roberts to Louisiana, where he shot her four times and cut her throat.

Gibbens, who offered no explanation for the shootings called it ‘a vacation that went terribly, horribly, sadly wrong’.

Sanders was identified as a suspect long after he was thought dead.

“55-year-old Thomas Steven Sanders is accused of killing a 12-year-old girl, Lexi Roberts, and her mother, Sue Ellen. The girl’s body was found by hunters in Catahoula Parish in October 2010. The mother had been shot to death in Arizona.”