2 sentenced in Parker teen's slaying

PANAMA CITY — Two suspects were sentenced Thursday after pleading no contest to charges stemming from the 2011 slaying of a 16-year-old boy.

Joel Millsap, 25, pleaded no contest to second-degree murder, just days before he was scheduled to stand trial for the July murder of Jacob Hendershot. Judge James Fensom sentenced him to 25 years.

Millsap’s girlfriend, 30-year-old Tammy Lee Morris, pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to second-degree murder. She was sentenced to three years probation.

For Hendershot’s mother Nancy Robinson, the plea relieved her of the burden of a jury trial in which she may have had to testify, and gives her at least some closure, she said.

“I feel like a little bit of weight has been lifted off of me,” she said Thursday.

Hendershot had been adopted by his grandparents and was living in Tennessee, but he was visiting with Robinson, his biological mother, for the summer in Parker when he was killed.

Several of the suspects in the case lived in the neighborhood where Hendershot and Robinson lived, and authorities believe the murder occurred inside Millsap’s apartment, only footsteps from Hendershot’s bedroom. His body was recovered in a concrete culvert just across the road on Aug. 13.

Hendershot had a relationship with 19-year-old Stephanie Pistey, who also has been arrested and charged with accessory after the fact to second-degree murder. The case against Pistey is on hold after Fensom ruled she is mentally incompetent to proceed to trial. She was ordered to the Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee for competency restoration.

Pistey said in interviews with police and on Facebook that she believed she was part vampire, but according to court records, a woman who shared a cell with Pistey told police in November that Pistey said she’d only made the vampire claims for the publicity.

The inmate also said Pistey told her that she was actually the one who cut Hendershot’s throat after Millsap and 18-year-old William Chase, who also is charged with second-degree murder, beat him, according to court records.

The charges against Chase are pending. Questions about Chase’s mental fitness for trial have been raised, as well.

An earlier version of this story appears below:

PANAMA CITY -- Two suspects in the murder of a 16-year-old boy pleaded no contest and were sentenced Thursday.

Joel Millsap, 25, of Parker, pleaded no contest to a charge of second-degree murder for killing Jacob Hendershot, 16, in July. Judge James Fensom sentenced Millsap to 25 years.

Tammy Lee Morris, 30, Millsap’s live-in girlfriend, also pleaded no contest to a charge of accessory after the fact to second-degree murder. Fensom sentenced her to three years probation.

Hendershot was reported missing July 13 and his body was recovered a month later. Parker Police arrested Millsap and Morris, as well as 19-year-old Stephanie Pistey and 18-year-old William Chase. Criminal charges against the latter are pending.

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