Accused murderer Tiffanie Lucas looked stone-faced as she appeared in court charged with shooting dead her two young sons — infuriating relatives of the slain boys, including one hoping to see her “put to death.”
The 32-year-old kept a serious expression throughout her appearance Monday as she pleaded not guilty to two counts of capital murder for the boys, aged 9 and 6.
“She just looks like she doesn’t have a care in the world,” one of the dead boy’s aunts, Bobbie Baker, told WAVE after the hearing.
“I think her sitting in jail for the rest of her life is a cakewalk,” she said of Lucas’ “unemotional” expression.
Ultimately, the only fitting penalty is “for her to be put to death,” the aunt said.
Lucas, of Shepherdsville, was arrested last month after a neighbor discovered her sons – Jayden Howard, 9, and his younger brother Maurice Baker Jr. – covered in blood next to a gun in a bedroom at the family’s home.
The boys died from multiple gunshot wounds.
“A 9-year-old and a 6-year-old lost their life,” said Baker, who is Maurice’s biological aunt but considered both boys to be her nephews.
“They won’t ever have the opportunity to … be who they were supposed to be,” she said.
Lucas could be eligible for the death penalty if she is found guilty on both counts, Commonwealth’s Attorney Bailey Taylor said Monday, according to WDRB. She was held on $2 million bond.
The family’s strife in the wake of the boys’ deaths has been compounded by troubling mix-ups with the coroner’s office, Baker added.
”[Maurice] had his visitation, and we got Jayden’s body instead,” the grieving aunt claimed.
Jefferson County Coroner JoAnn Farmer told The Post on Tuesday that the responsibility for identifying and labeling the boys’ bodies fell to the Norton Children’s Hospital.
“The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office did not [bag or tag] these two boys,” she explained, saying that the hospital’s meeting department is “handling” the family’s complaint.
Norton Children’s Hospital did not immediately return a request for comment.
The childrens’ relatives also feel failed by Child Protective Services, Baker added.
Shortly after Maurice and Jayden were killed, Jayden’s older paternal half-brother claimed that several family members tried to alert authorities to their concerns about the children over the years.
“We wanted them. We would have taken them with open arms. We loved them so much,” Durrell Howell said at the time.
In an early interview with investigators, Lucas claimed that her sons’ deaths were “an accident,” Bullitt County Detective Richard Beahl said at an earlier hearing, WDRB reported.
Lucas is due back in court next year.