Julia Egler

Introduction

Julia Egler is a Florida teenager who, at 16, killed her mother, Kelley McCollom, 38, and her mother’s boyfriend, Matthew Szejnrok, 22, inside their Palm Bay home on Benchor Road SE, then staged the scene as a burglary. She was sentenced on September 25, 2026 to 50 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in a negotiated agreement with the Brevard County State Attorney’s Office that survivors approved. Under the deal, she must serve a mandatory minimum of 25 years before she is eligible under state law for a sentence review due to her youth at the time of the crime, and after prison she faces a mental health evaluation and 20 years of supervised probation. Appearing before Circuit Judge Michelle Naberhaus in Viera, Egler told the court, “I’m sorry. I’m haunted by grief every day. I have shown that I can be rehabilitated. Please give me a chance to reintegrate back into society.”

Background Information

Egler was 16 and living in the Palm Bay family home with her mother in July 2024; McCollom was dating Szejnrok, a 22-year-old who sometimes stayed at the house, and Szejnrok’s brother Dustin lived next door, where Matthew had been living with him. According to investigators, the household carried long-standing tensions: police said the motive involved ongoing conflicts between Egler and her mother, including McCollom’s disapproval of Egler’s gender transition and Egler’s own disapproval of her mother’s relationship with the much-younger Szejnrok. The NY Post reported that Egler, who was born female and wanted to transition to male, had “reached her boiling point” over her mother’s disapproval, citing the affidavit. Police also said the family had been tied to two earlier abuse allegations — one involving Egler’s biological father 11 years earlier, another in which Szejnrok allegedly grabbed McCollom during public arguments — and that charges in both were dropped.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated. Egler pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder before Circuit Judge Michelle Naberhaus on September 25, 2026, and the plea and 50-year sentence are matters of court record. The killings themselves are therefore admitted and adjudicated, not merely alleged; details below come from court filings, prosecutors and investigators as reported in fetched sources.

Just after midnight on July 7, 2024, Egler called 911, acting hysterical, and told operators an intruder had smashed a sliding glass door with a hammer and was ransacking the home while she hid in her bedroom with her dog. Officers found McCollom dead of gunshot wounds in the living room and Szejnrok in a bathroom, shot and stabbed repeatedly. Per the arrest report, Egler had waited in her mother’s bedroom for the couple to come home, greeted them with “Welcome home” holding a gun in one hand and a knife in her pocket, and opened fire with her mother’s .38-caliber revolver.

When she ran out of ammunition, investigators said, she stabbed Szejnrok with a chef’s knife on the bathroom floor as he pleaded for his life; the affidavit states the mortally wounded man “essentially asked [Egler] to take him out of his misery,” and she retrieved another bullet, loaded the revolver and shot him in the head. The staged break-in collapsed quickly: detectives noted the lack of forced entry, found glass on McCollom’s leg and on Szejnrok’s phone suggesting the door was broken after the killings, recovered the revolver outside Egler’s window, and matched bloody footprints in the house to her shoes. Asked what the intruder looked like, she offered only “Oh … it’s hard to remember.” After being read her Miranda rights, she confessed and admitted staging the break-in, according to the arrest report.

Public Reaction and Consequences

A Brevard County grand jury indicted Egler on two counts of first-degree premeditated murder in August 2024, and prosecutors pursued the case against her as an adult. The case drew national attention, in part because of her publicly released interrogation video. At the sentencing hearing, Dustin Szejnrok told the court his family still lives 75 feet from the house where his brother died: “I heard the shots – I thought they were fireworks… I was 75 feet away from my brother and had no idea he was fighting for his life.” “Her actions didn’t just take my brother, they ruined our home,” he said. “There isn’t a sentence that will bring my brother back.” Assistant State Attorney Kerri Fowler called the plea “resolution and finality to the family that it’s done today.”

Current Status

Egler, now 18, is serving her 50-year sentence in the Florida state prison system, with 25 years mandatory before any sentence review; she completed high school while in pretrial detention in Polk County. Because she pleaded guilty as part of a negotiated agreement approved by the survivors, there will be no trial. Her apology at sentencing — “Please give me a chance to reintegrate back into society” — was her first public statement since her confession.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Egler was a 16-year-old high school student when she killed her mother and her mother’s boyfriend; at 18 she is a convicted murderer who will spend her entire young adulthood — and, absent a successful sentence review, most of her life — in prison. The plea spared her a possible life term on the original first-degree charges but leaves her confined until at least mid-century under the negotiated cap. The case has become part of the national conversation about family violence and teen parricide, amplified by the released interrogation footage, and the surviving family remains next door to the house where the killings happened.

Sources

• *NY Post, “Trans teen who gunned down mom and her much-younger boyfriend gets hefty sentence in plea deal”, 28 September 2026 — source
• *Office of the State Attorney 18th Judicial Circuit (sa18.org), “Palm Bay teen sentenced to 50 years for 2024 murder of mother and boyfriend”, 26 September 2026 — source
• *WKMG ClickOrlando, “Brevard County teen sentenced to 50 years in Palm Bay double murder case”, 25 September 2026 — source