A West Virginia mom will spend decades in prison after slitting the throat of her 4-year-old daughter.
Summers County Prosecuting Attorney Chris Lefler confirmed to Oxygen.com that Rebakah Weikle pleaded guilty April 30 to first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death after she confessed to killing her daughter Haley in July 2022.
Rebakah was sentenced to life in prison, but will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years.
For years, Rebakah denied killing her daughter—instead placing blame on her husband Rusty Weikle—before she admitted to carrying out the crime herself.
“Everybody is just happy that the truth is known,” Lefler said, “and this little girl got some peace.”
What Happened to Haley Weikle?
In the months leading up to the killing, Lefler said Rebakah had developed a “resentment” and “jealousy toward her daughter,” who he described as a “beautiful little girl.”
According to the prosecutor, cellular data revealed that in June 2022 Rebakah began conducting searches on harming others, knife wounds and lacerations to the torso.
For the family, July 11, 2022, was a normal day. Rusty—who worked in the logging industry—got home from work and the family had dinner together before he and the couple’s two sons went to sleep.
Then, at around 11 p.m., Rebakah told her daughter Haley that it was time for bed.
“While she's going to her room, [Rebakah] retrieves a knife from the kitchen, follows her into the bedroom, and then, from what I understand, it was kind of immediate,” Lefler told Oxygen.com. “She rolls the little girl onto her stomach, kind of holds her down, muffles her mouth with either a blanket or pillow, and attempts to cut her throat.”
During the attempt, Lefler said Haley struggled and was stabbed twice in the chest, before Rebakah slit her throat as the girl lay face down on the bed.
After the killing, Rebakah hid the knife and her clothes then woke up her husband and, according to Lefler, had sex with him.
Later, as her husband slept beside her, Rebakah used her phone to search for terms like “throat cut” and “fingerprints,” he said.
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“She laid there, for all we know,” Lefler said, “until her husband woke up.”
The next morning after learning that Haley still wasn’t awake, Rusty asked Rebakah to check on her at which point she told him that she was dead, Lefler said.
Prosecutor Says Rusty Weikle Ignored “Red Flags”Rebekah initially told police that Rusty had killed Haley to cover up sexual abuse. However, Lefler said Rebakah eventually admitted to lying about the sexual abuse and confessed to carrying out the act herself.
According to Lefler, authorities do not believe that Rusty played a role in the killing or the clean up.
However, Lefler argued that he did ignore “red flags” with his wife.
“He did not take action to protect that family from her,” he said. “Now, is there a belief that he knew that one night she was gonna get a knife and cut the baby’s throat? I don’t think that, but there was red flags that something bad was coming.”
As a result, Rusty pleaded guilty in December to child neglect resulting in death and two counts of child neglect creating substantial risk of harm or serious bodily injury for his two surviving children.
At the time, Rusty was credited for the more than three years he’d already served behind bars and sentenced to two years of home confinement, followed by seven years of probation.
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Rusty was in court April 30 as Rebakah pleaded guilty to killing their daughter.
“I want everybody to know how evil the person that she is and what all she has done. She killed a 4-year-old baby, my baby,” he said, per WOAY. “She was jealous that I was paying attention to her, doing what I was supposed to do, watching out for her.”
For Lefler, the guilty plea has finally given some resolution to a case that has “consumed” those involved with it for years.
“I kind of believe that Haley herself got us to this point,” he told Oxygen.com. “That living with the horror what she did, and that little girl's memory haunting her every day, she finally broke and told us the story."
