After she and her boyfriend killed her grandparents “because she wanted them dead,” a 19-year-old Oklahoma woman faces life in prison.
Heidi Dutton, who was 17 when the killings occurred, was given a life sentence on Friday for killing Deborah Dutton, 67, and Larry Dutton, 73. In addition to conspiracy to commit murder, the defendant entered a guilty plea to two counts of first-degree murder and desecration of a corpse.
Before becoming eligible for parole, she must complete 85% of a 45-year sentence, or just over 38 years.
Due to his Cherokee Nation citizenship, her lover, Lucas Anthony Walker, 22, received a sentence of 35 years in federal prison.
“This was a calculated and brutal crime, but the law requires us to weigh youth and culpability,” Washington County District Attorney Will Drake stated. “This sentence holds Heidi Dutton accountable, mirrors the sentence imposed on her co-defendant, and spares the victims’ family the trauma of trial and years of appeals.”
Authorities claim that just a few days prior to Christmas Day 2022, Dutton and Walker murdered her grandparents.
After not hearing from the victims, neighbors and family members got worried and asked police to conduct a welfare check at their Dewey, Oklahoma, home, which is roughly 50 miles north of Tulsa.
The federal lawsuit claims that on January 20, 2023, deputies from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office searched the house and found the elder Duttons interred in a shallow grave in the backyard.
“[Dutton] was determined to be the adopted daughter, and biological granddaughter, of the two victims,” according to the complaint.
Although the victims’ bedroom had been cleaned of blood, some still leaked into the flooring. In police interviews, both suspects confessed to killing the victims. According to Heidi Dutton, her boyfriend killed her grandparents at her request.
Walker admitted to detectives that he broke into the Dutton residence while the victims were asleep on December 19, 2022.
When he heard sounds coming from the victims’ room, he grabbed a.22 caliber handgun from the house and waited in his girlfriend’s bedroom. Deborah Dutton opened the door to the bedroom, and he waited outside. According to investigators, Walker then shot her in the face.
Walker attempted to shoot, but the gun stuck, so Larry Dutton hurried him out of bed. Walker pulled out a knife and repeatedly stabbed him in the stomach, chest, and face. Deborah Dutton was also stabbed by him.
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The defendants buried the victims in shallow graves after wrapping their bodies in blankets and carrying them outdoors to the backyard. The duo was seen carrying at least one victim together in ring camera footage.
According to the Bartlesville Examiner Enterprise, which cited court records and evidence from the preliminary hearing, Dutton gave no explanation for the purpose other than that “she wanted them dead.”
She allegedly said, “We kill them.”
Larry Dutton was a former manager of the Lt. William M. Milliken Airport in Eureka, Kansas, and a retired Master Staff Sgt. in the U.S. Air Force, according to his obituary.
His wife was a former chef, a retired Staff Sgt. in the U.S. Air Force, and originally from Tennessee.
