Julia Egler pleaded guilty to two second-degree murder counts, resolving a case that began with a false report of a home invasion.

VIERA, Fla. — A Florida teenager who was 16 when authorities said she killed her mother and her mother’s boyfriend inside their Palm Bay home has been sentenced to 50 years in state prison after pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree murder.

Julia G. Egler, now 18, entered the pleas Sept. 25 before Circuit Judge Michelle Naberhaus in a negotiated agreement with the State Attorney’s Office for Florida’s 18th Judicial Circuit. The deal ended a prosecution that had begun with two first-degree premeditated murder charges and eliminated the need for a trial. Prosecutors said the agreement was approved by surviving family members. Egler must serve a mandatory minimum of 25 years before becoming eligible under Florida law for a sentence review tied to the fact that Egler was a juvenile when the killings occurred. The sentence also calls for 20 years of supervised probation after prison and a mental health evaluation.

The plea closed the criminal case more than two years after Kelley McCollom, 38, and Matthew Szejnrok, 22, were found dead shortly after midnight July 7, 2024, at the Benchor Road SE home in Palm Bay. Egler initially told a 911 dispatcher that an unknown man had entered through a rear sliding door while Egler hid in a bedroom. Officers responding to the call instead found McCollom dead in the living room and Szejnrok in a bathroom. Investigators said both had been shot, and Szejnrok had also suffered stab wounds. What first reached police as an apparent home invasion quickly became a double-homicide investigation centered on the teenager who had placed the emergency call.

The account Egler gave investigators began to unravel as detectives examined the scene. According to the probable cause affidavit, the rear sliding door had been shattered, but physical evidence did not fit the claim that an outsider had broken into the house before the killings. Investigators reported finding bloody footprints beneath the broken glass, indicating the blood was already present before the glass was shattered. Law enforcement also said the footprints matched Egler’s shoes. A .38-caliber revolver was found in the backyard near a bedroom window, while detectives documented spent shell casings and a knife inside the house. Prosecutors later said the lack of forced entry and the positioning of evidence also conflicted with the intruder story.

Authorities said Egler eventually admitted staging the scene and described taking a gun and ammunition from McCollom’s locked bedroom before McCollom and Szejnrok returned home. According to the arrest affidavit, Egler waited for the couple and greeted them with the words “Welcome home” before opening fire. McCollom was shot in the living room. Szejnrok was also shot and made his way into a bathroom, investigators said. The affidavit described additional violence against Szejnrok after the initial gunfire. In keeping with the public record, prosecutors characterized the killings as deliberate, but Egler later disputed in court that the violence had been planned in advance. The guilty pleas were to second-degree murder rather than the first-degree premeditated counts originally returned by a grand jury.

Investigators attributed the violence to escalating conflict inside the household. Police records said Egler had become deeply upset over disagreements with McCollom in the weeks before the killings. Authorities said one source of friction was McCollom’s relationship with Szejnrok, who was 16 years younger than McCollom. Investigators also cited disagreements concerning Egler’s gender transition and McCollom’s response to it. Those details came from law enforcement’s account of Egler’s statements and were presented as part of the suspected motive; they do not provide a complete account of the family relationship. The prosecution did not have to prove a motive at trial because Egler resolved the case by admitting guilt to the two second-degree murder charges.

The case moved into adult court soon after the killings. A Brevard County grand jury indicted Egler in August 2024 on two counts of first-degree premeditated murder, and prosecutors announced that the teenager would be prosecuted as an adult. Before the plea agreement, defense lawyers challenged parts of the investigation and sought to limit the use of Egler’s recorded interrogation. Local reporting from the case showed that the defense questioned whether detectives had properly obtained the juvenile suspect’s waiver of constitutional rights during questioning. Those issues were never decided by a trial jury because the negotiated pleas ended the contested phase of the prosecution. Egler remained in custody while the case was pending and completed high school during pretrial detention, according to prosecutors.

The sentencing hearing shifted attention from the investigation to the losses described by surviving relatives. Prosecutors said Szejnrok had lived next door to members of his family and that his brother was nearby on the night of the killings. Dustin Szejnrok told the court he had heard the shots but believed at the time that they were fireworks. He said he was about 75 feet away and did not realize his brother was in danger. The family’s continuing proximity to the Palm Bay house has made the crime difficult to escape, he said in a victim impact statement. “Her actions didn’t just take my brother, they ruined our home,” he told the court, adding that no prison term could return his brother to the family.

Egler also addressed the court before Naberhaus imposed the agreed sentence. Prosecutors quoted Egler apologizing and saying grief continued to follow her. “I’m sorry. I’m haunted by grief every day,” Egler said. “I have shown that I can be rehabilitated. Please give me a chance to reintegrate back into society.” In separate reporting from the hearing, Egler said the killings had not been planned and described the conduct as a terrible decision made while still a child. That statement stood in tension with the original first-degree allegations and the sequence described in the arrest affidavit, which said Egler obtained the weapon before the victims arrived and waited for them. The negotiated second-degree pleas resolved the legal dispute without requiring jurors to decide between competing interpretations of intent.

The 50-year term is therefore both a final judgment and, because of Egler’s age at the time of the crimes, a sentence that carries a future review mechanism. Prosecutors said Egler must first serve 25 years before becoming eligible for review under state law. Eligibility for review does not mean automatic release, and the State Attorney’s Office described it as a later examination of the sentence based on Egler’s youth when the crimes were committed. If Egler ultimately leaves prison after serving the required term and any further incarceration ordered under the sentence, the judgment requires a mental health evaluation and 20 years of supervised probation. No trial or additional guilt-phase proceedings are scheduled following the Sept. 25 pleas.

Assistant State Attorney Kerri Fowler said the negotiated resolution gave the victims’ families a measure of finality after more than two years of court proceedings. The guilty pleas formally replaced the first-degree murder prosecution with convictions for two counts of second-degree murder, and Egler began serving the 50-year state prison sentence. The case now moves from prosecution to the correctional system, with any youth-based sentence review remaining years away.

Author note: Last updated November 9, 2026.