Two teenage girls are accused of stabbing a 75-year-old man to death in a robbery that netted them just $15, and police say the mother of one of the teens helped put them up to it.
Dannette R. Gillespie, 38, gave knives to her 15-year-old daughter and Vanessa Anne Ocampo, 19, then waited in their car while the teens robbed and killed Eugene Palma, according to a probable cause warrant.
All three were charged with capital murder Friday and were being held without bail. Police did not immediately respond to a call Saturday asking if the suspects had attorneys to speak for them.
Palma, a bar owner, was found stabbed several times in the driveway of his home in this Houston suburb Wednesday. He did not know the women, Pasadena police said.
According to the warrant, Ocampo told police the three had been looking for someone to rob that morning.
"He would've given them money — that's the crazy thing," Kim Nawrot, a bartender at Palma's bar, told the Houston Chronicle. "He was the kind of guy that would've given anyone the shirt off of his back."
A palm print on Palma's car led police to the women, authorities said. Gillespie and her daughter, who was not identified because she is a juvenile, were arrested in Pasadena. Ocampo was arrested in San Antonio.
Police said Ocampo told investigators the three went to Palma's bar and followed him home, and that Gillespie handed knives to her daughter and Ocampo and "encouraged them to commit the robbery."
The two younger women went through Palma's pockets and car in search of money and Ocampo took $15, according to the warrant.