John Jefferson
Top inset: Jesse Gilmer (Roper & Sons). Bottom insets, from left: Isaac Honigschmidt and Sallie Gilmer (Lancaster County Department of Corrections). Background: The location where Jesse Gilmer was killed (KOLN).
A Nebraska teen who helped plan the stabbing murder of his girlfriend’s father after she said she was tired of the “constant fighting” between her parents and the mental abuse from her father will spend decades behind bars.
Isaac Honigschmidt, 18, learned his fate on Friday in the death of Jesse Gilmer, Jr., 70. Honigschmidt was found guilty of aiding and abetting a murder. A judge sentenced him to 15 to 20 years for aiding and abetting plus five to 10 years for tampering with evidence, reports local ABC affiliate KLKN. The sentences will run consecutively. Honigschmidt received credit for more than two years already served in jail. Honigschmidt’s girlfriend and the victim’s daughter Sallie Gilmer, 18, was sentenced last month to 40 to 60 years in prison after pleading guilty to a second-degree murder charge.
The events leading to the Oct. 3, 2022, murder began when Honigschmidt drove Sallie Gilmer from school to her apartment in Lincoln, where she stabbed her father. Afterward, she and Honigschmidt drove back to school. They had turned their phones to airplane mode and then shut them off to make it appear they were at school the entire time, authorities said.
After returning home from school, Sallie Gilmer called 911, reporting she found her father dead. When police arrived, they found her father dead on a couch in the living room. He had six stab wounds and a cut on the front of his head. One stab wound went through his rib cage and hit an artery, causing him to bleed out internally within a few minutes, court documents said.
His right leg had been previously amputated below the thigh from a car crash that further damaged a leg injury he suffered in the Vietnam War. Court documents described him as “wheelchair bound” after a fall that broke his hip months earlier.
Sallie Gilmer and Honigschmidt were questioned by police about the murder, and authorities said their statements and digital and physical evidence pointed to them as the culprits.
Honigschmidt and Sallie Gilmer, juveniles at the time of the murder, were tried as adults. Both tried unsuccessfully to appeal their cases to have them transferred to juvenile court.
Court documents in Sallie Gilmer’s appeal outline the events leading to the murder.
The documents said she wanted her father dead for years, that her father “disliked” or “hated” Honigschmidt, and she and Honigschmidt discussed and planned the killing over the preceding days.
“The district court found that the motivation for the offense was based on Gilmer’s ‘attempt to eliminate the stress, depression, and anxiety caused by her [father’s] constant fighting with her mother, his mental abuse, his tendency to commit acts placing the family in debt and her desire to continue her relationship with … Honigschmidt.””
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