A transgender teenager from Pennsylvania has admitted to killing her 12-year-old friend while they were watching Netflix and then posting photos of the child’s body on Instagram.
Ash Cooper, 18, who was originally charged as Joshua Cooper, pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges including third-degree murder, possession of an instrument of crime and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence in the death of Morgan Connors, Fox News reported.
The two were watching Netflix on Nov. 25, 2022, at a trailer park in Bensalem Township when Morgan got up to use the bathroom and Cooper decided to clean and organize her father’s gun safe, according to court documents obtained by the Bucks County Courier Times.
It is unclear what happened next, but police would later receive a call from the mother of one of Cooper’s acquaintances, who said she saw Morgan’s body in a video call on Instagram.
“From the call, investigators learned that a juvenile witness was on an Instagram video chat with an acquaintance, later identified as Cooper, who claimed to have just killed someone,” the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
“In that video chat, Cooper flipped the video image and showed the legs and feet of someone covered in blood.”
Cooper then asked the acquaintance to help clean up and dispose of the body, at which point, the teen told her mother.
When authorities arrived, they found Cooper “running out of the back of the trailer.”
In the bathroom, they found Morgan with her pants around her leg and dead from a gunshot wound, according to the Courier Times.
They also found towels drenched in blood, cleaning supplies and the strong odor of bleach emanating from the bathroom — suggesting Cooper tried to clean up the crime scene.
Upon her arrest, Cooper insisted, “It was an accident,” an affidavit says.
She never revealed the motive behind the killing, prosecutors said, but an affidavit states that she told police she had been in a sexual relationship with the victim, according to 6 ABC.
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Cooper’s attorney also said in court she had a “difficult upbringing” and felt “significant remorse and sorrow.”
Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Finley also expressed his concerns about Cooper’s “troubling history of conduct and treatment of other people” and the lack of any “real explanation for what happened.”
He sentenced Cooper Thursday to 15 to 40 years behind bars, followed by seven years of probation, and recommended that she be placed in a therapeutic community within the state prison system.
As a legal adult, she is also required to undergo a psychological and psychiatric evaluation.
With Post wires
