Documentary: South Dakota Traffic Stop Helped Unravel Murder Plot

It started as a seemingly innocent traffic stop in South Dakota more than 15 years ago but quickly unraveled into a gruesome tale of the cold-blooded murder of the mother at the hands of her daughter and two other teenagers.

At about 3:30 on the morning of September 28, 2008, a car with Texas license plates pulled into a gas station in Yankton. That caught the attention of a Yankton Police officer, who stopped to question the three teenagers in the vehicle, which was registered to Susan Bailey of Roanoke, Texas. Susan was the mother of 17-year-old Jennifer Bailey, who was in the car with her boyfriend, 16-year-old Paul Hensoen Jr., and her younger brother, 13-year-old David.

After finding some inconsistencies in their stories, the Yankton officer got in contact with authorities in Roanoke to relay his concerns to them.

That phone call set in motion a series of events that would lead to a grisly discovery.

725 miles away, Roanoke Police responded to the Bailey home and discovered Susan's body in a pool of blood at the top of the stairs. She had been stabbed 26 times and her throat was slit.

Authorities later discovered that Jennifer, Paul, and a 14-year-old friend of theirs had hatched a plot to kill Susan because she disapproved of her daughter's relationship with the boyfriend.

While in the Bailey home, police also discovered a bathtub which reportedly rigged to carry out an electrocution and also found a bowl of poisoned chocolate pudding in the refrigerator.

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Jennifer had first tried to kill her mother five days earlier when Susan awoke to find her daughter standing over her with a large butcher's knife. Jennifer was taken to a juvenile detention center but released a short time later.

After carrying out the killing two days later, Jennifer, Paul, and David took Susan's car and credit cards and made the decision to flee to Canada using U.S. Highway 81, which would ultimately take them through Yankton.

Jennifer and Paul eventually both pleaded guilty to murder and were each sentenced to 60 years in prison.

The case was the subject of both a 2015 book (Let's Kill Mom: Four Texas Teens and a Horrifying Murder by Donna Fielder) and an episode of an Investigation Discovery Channel crime documentary (Epic Mysteries: Let's Kill Mom).

Now, the murder is being revisited in a new episode of Oxygen True Crime Channel crime documentary, Snapped: Killer Couples, which debuted last month.