Background: The area of the crime scene on Kolbs Corner in Jefferson County, Texas (KBMT/YouTube). Insets (from top to bottom): Cody Arnold and Chelsea Shipp (Jefferson County Sheriff's Office).
A man in Texas who was 21 years old when he plotted with his lover to kill a 16-year-old girl they feared he had gotten pregnant will spend decades behind bars.
Cody Arnold has been sentenced to 34 years in prison after being found guilty of murdering Katelynn Stone, southeast Texas ABC and NBC affiliate KBMT reported. His co-defendant, Chelsea Shipp, had previously accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to 40 years for the killing.
In March 2022, Stone was living with Arnold, prosecutors said. He is also said to have also been romantically involved with Shipp, who was about 25 years old at the time.
At some point, Stone took a pregnancy test and it came back positive, Arnold would reportedly later tell investigators. To him and Shipp, this sequence of events presented a problem.
Shipp was telling Arnold that "he was going to get in trouble for getting her pregnant," noting the age difference between Arnold and Stone. According to prosecutors, Arnold was worried he could be labeled a sex offender, and he and Shipp hatched a plan.
On the weekend of March 26, 2022, Shipp and Arnold were at Arnold's home on the 14000 block of Kolbs Corner near Beaumont, Texas. "They were seen together. They were talking about what they were going to do," Jimmy Hamm with the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office said during Arnold's trial, per KBMT. "They were smoking meth that entire weekend to build up the courage to kill that girl."
According to Arnold's version of events cited in a probable cause affidavit obtained by the outlet, around 2 p.m. that day, he walked into the room where Stone was sleeping and saw Shipp pointing a gun at her. The older woman then pulled the trigger, killing the teen.
Arnold reportedly covered Stone's head with a trash bag after the shooting and said he did so because he did not want to look at her.
The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office reported that, on March 27, 2022, around 5 p.m., deputies were told about a "possible murder" at Arnold's address. They arrived to find the body of Stone, "who had suffered a gunshot wound."
Arnold was arrested, and two days later, the law enforcement agency announced that it secured a warrant for murder against Shipp. She was arrested on March 31, 2022.
Witnesses reportedly told investigators that Shipp had been confessing to people she shot Stone, apparently telling one woman, "I got rid of her" and "I shot her," while using two fingers to make a shooting motion.
According to The Beaumont Enterprise, Shipp told investigators that she killed Stone at Arnold's request. When they asked her why she did it, she said, "Because one of them was sleeping around on the other."
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