Twin sisters, 21, jailed for 30 years for stabbing mother to death (2024)

Identical twin sisters have been sentenced to 30 years in jail after admitting to the brutal murder of their mother four years ago.

Jasmiyah and Tasmiyah Whitehead were 16 when they stabbed their mother, Jarmecca Whitehead, 34, so violently that they severed her spinal cord. She alsosuffered stab wounds to her lungs, jugular and the back of her neck.

The twins turned on their mother after getting into an argument on January 13, 2010, at their home in Conyers, Georgia, after getting up late for school.

11alivesaidthe 21-year-old sisters recounted chilling details of the knife attack in recent taped confessions, revealing that their mother told her daughters she hated them as she bled to death in the bathtub.

'My state of mind at the time was defend yourself. It wasn't like a fight on the street, it was more like a fight until somebody dies,' said Jasmiyah during the interview.

The twins told prosecutors they had gotten into a verbal argument with their mother that morning who was holding a pot at the time to threaten them.

As the twins tried to take the pot away from their mother, the fight became violent.

During her filmed statement, Jasmiyah said: 'We all yelling, we all mad. Somehow, someway I don't know where she got it from, I don't even remember a knife block but she has a knife.'

Jasmiyah admitted she broke a vase over her mother's head while Tasmiyah grabbed the pot and hit her with it.

In the chaos, the knife ended up being held by Tasmiyah who stabbed her mother as her twin strangled her with a ribbon.Jasmiyah then took the knife and continued to stab her.

The twins carried their injured mother to the bathtub which was filled with water.

As she lay dying, her daughters watched and the mother told them she hated them,11alivereported.

The twins watched their mother sink below the surface and knew that she was dead, they said in statements.

After the murder, the girls collected their mom's purse and phone along with the pot and knife in a plastic bag, and then went to school.

It wasn't until later that day that the girls summoned a Rockdale County Sheriff's deputy who was driving by their home. He found the victim submerged in the bathtub. The officer said at the time that he could 'smell the blood' in the air at the home.

The teens lied and said they found their mother dead.

Police initially treated them as victims but found that the 16-year-olds had cuts and bite marks, implicating their involvement in a vicious fight.

Both girls originally pleaded not guilty when they were arrested and charged four months later.

The twins both expressed regret that they had not called the police and helped their injured mother.

The family had a violent history prior before the fight which escalated to murder.

Their mother had accused her daughters of smoking pot and being sexually active while they in turn had accused her of using illegal drugs.

The twins got in a fight with their mother in 2008 and were forced by a juvenile court to live with their great-grandmother, Della Frasier.

They moved back with their mother a week before the murder. The twins had told a counselor that if forced to go back to their mother's home they would kill her, according to a prosecutor last year.

Jarmecca Whitehead's mother , Lydia Whitehead, told the court in 2014 that she was heartbroken over her daughter's death but that she loves and forgave the twins.

'Unfortunately, my grandchildren never learned right from wrong … and that’s why we are here,' she said. 'They should be in college, not sitting somewhere in jail.'