- Elyse Pahler was killed by three of her fellow high school peers
- Her death is explored in the latest episode of ID’s A Killer Among Friends
- MORE: Teenage killer raped and murdered best friend
A group of teenage boys murdered a 15-year-old schoolgirl and left her body in the woods to decompose in a sickening plot to ‘earn a ticket to hell.’
Elyse Pahler was killed in Templeton, Florida, on July 22, 1995, by her fellow Arroyo Grande High School pupils Royce Casey, Jacob Delashmutt, and Joseph Fiorella.
She was stabbed to death as a sacrifice to the devil before her body was hidden in a field.
Elyse’s death is now the subject of ID’s true crime documentary series A Killer Among Friends’ latest episode, Devil in the Hallways.
The episode lays bare the motivation for Elyse’s untimely death and how the mystery surrounding her disappearance ripped through an entire community.
Elyse was first reported missing by her parents, Lisanne and David Pahler, on July 23, 1995.
The previous night, the family had been watching a television program when the house phone rang. Elyse picked up the phone but ‘didn’t say much’ and retired to bed shortly after.
Hours later, Lisanne awoke in the middle of the night with a feeling that Elyse was gone and after checking on her daughter, she established the teen had indeed left the home.
Officers searched for Elyse for eight months, and despite numerous reported sightings, her body wasn’t found until Royce, one of the killers, confessed to a priest that he had taken part in her murder.
The clergyman alerted cops, who were then able to find her remains on March 15, 1996.
Elyse was the oldest of four sisters, and she was described as an athlete, a great student, and had close friends at school.
Her killers, on the other hand, were described as potheads who listened to metal music and were ‘weird.’
They were in a band called Hatred, which was modeled after the death metal band called Slayer.
According to the doc, they believed that by sacrificing Elyse, they would be able to make better music.
Investigators concluded that Elyse had been lured by the boys to the field in the middle of the night under what her friends and family believe would have been false pretenses.
‘I think she was tricked because it didn’t make any sense that she would go out with those weird kids from high school,’ her mom, Lisanne, said in the documentary.
Elyse’s father, David, added: ‘There was a phone booth that they used to call her. The next step was to walk up to the top of our driveway, and they took her away.’
The motive for Elyse’s death is perhaps the most chilling.
‘In the confession, Royce was talking about having sold their soul to the devil and their objective here on earth is to kill 666 blue-eyed virgins as a sacrifice to Satan in order to earn a ticket to hell,’ David continued.
‘They took her to a place in the woods where a series of trees fell and took the shape of a pentagram and that’s where they built their altar and that’s where they did their sacrifice.’
Before her daughter’s death, mom Lisanne recalled seeing one of her daughter’s killers watching her play with her friends on a trampoline.
‘Elyse rode the bus with Joe, and Joe actually really liked Elyse,’ she remembered.
She recounted how Joe had once knocked on the front door to ask if the family had seen his missing black cat.
‘I had a creepy feeling about him,’ she continued, adding: ‘Once he came by and was watching them all on the trampoline. He was lingering watching them, it was weird.’
Royce, Jacob, and Joseph pled no contest and were each sentenced to 25 to 26 years to life in prison for the murder.
The District Attorney’s Office’s chief investigator, Doug Odom, testified that the three teenagers chose Elyse as their victim because ‘she had blonde hair and blue eyes, and because she was a virgin, she would be a perfect sacrifice for the devil.’
Jacob was released in July.
