On September 4, 1989, Joan Marie Heaton, Jennifer Marie Heaton, and Melissa Joan Heaton were discovered dead in their home. Joan's mother had gone to check in after not hearing from them in a few days. She found the inside of the house splattered with blood. Joan, who had been widowed some years earlier, was on the floor under a bloody sheet, with 10-year-old Jennifer nearby. They had each been stabbed over fifty times; 8-year-old Melissa was found on the kitchen floor with a knife broken off in her neck. Joan had been beaten, bitten, and strangled, and Melissa's skull was crushed with a chair. When 15-year-old Craig Price was arrested for killing the Heatons, it was discovered that he had committed a similar murder in the neighborhood two years earlier. Because of his age, state law dictated that the boy could be sentenced to no more than 5 years for his crimes. But various legal maneuvers, along with Craig's occasional acts of impulsive violence while incarcerated, have kept him behind bars so far.