Left inset: Jeffrey Smerer (WJBK/YouTube). Right inset: Kinzley Smerer, Bentley Smerer and Kayleb Smerer (GoFundMe). Background: The apartments where Jeffrey Smerer allegedly shot his three children (WDIV/YouTube).
A Michigan father who was "stressed" over a sentencing for an alleged indecent exposure incident has admitted to killing his 17-year-old son and shooting two of his other children on the morning of the court proceeding, court records show.
Jeffrey Smerer, 45, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a slew of charges related to the September 2025 gun attack. Court records viewed by Law&Crime show that Smerer, who also attempted to take his own life, chose to enter a guilty plea without taking a deal from prosecutors.
"Was it your intention or your plan to shoot the children in the home?" senior assistant public defense attorney David Kelley asked Tuesday during Smerer's plea hearing, according to the Port Huron Times Herald. "Yes," Smerer responded.
"Was it also your intention to shoot yourself?" Kelley asked, to which Smerer also said yes, while crying.
The Port Huron father had been planning the murder-suicide attempt for a week before carrying it out. Smerer sliced his wrist open and took "multiple forms of medication" that he had stashed in the family's master bedroom, but was able to stay alive. Smerer used a .380 handgun to shoot his 17-year-old son, Kayleb Smerer — who died — and two of the boy's siblings, 13-year-old Bentley Smerer and 12-year-old Kinzley Smerer, who suffered critical injuries.
When it came time to take his own life, Smerer told police his pistol "jammed." He was reportedly disarmed by his wife and 19-year-old son, who were awake and home at the time.
Cops questioned Smerer afterward about what was going through his mind before the shooting and alleged suicide attempt, and he allegedly told them he was thinking about an indecent exposure charge he faced in 2020 and was "stressed due to the sentencing." Smerer said he believed he "might be going to jail" for the charge.
"He woke up, woke the kids up to go to school and ya know, it was a regular day and something just happened," said Smerer's sister, Victoria Frazer, in an interview with local ABC affiliate WXYZ after the shooting.
"He indicated that he woke up around 6 a.m. to his alarm, retrieved his .380 from the gun safe, which he keeps underneath his bed, and then proceeded into the bedroom of Kinzley and Bentley," a police detective testified during a preliminary hearing last year.
After entering the children's bedroom, Smerer said "good morning" and then walked into a family bathroom. "He talked to himself in the mirror," the detective told the court during last year's hearing. "Questioning himself if he was really going to do this."
Smerer told police that he went back into the children's bedroom moments later and started blasting, with Bentley being targeted while he was "underneath a blanket" and on his cellphone.
"He was aiming towards the glow," the detective recalled Smerer saying. "Kinzley was getting up and he aimed at her throat and fired."
Asked by cops "why he focused" on the children and chose to take their lives, the detective said Smerer claimed, "His reason was that he was closest to Kinzley and Kayleb. He also said that Kinzley was close to Bentley."
Smerer said the plan was "to take Kinzley, Bentley, and Kayleb with him and then shoot himself," according to the detective.
Smerer faces five life sentences after pleading guilty to one count of open murder, two counts of assault with intent to commit murder and two counts of first-degree child abuse. He also pleaded guilty to five counts of felony firearm use, which carry a penalty of up to two years in prison that must be served consecutively; all five charges can be served concurrently.
Smerer is scheduled to be sentenced on June 29.
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