Father who murdered his three daughters and told his ex 'you can come home now, I killed the kids' sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole



Trial determined Schaffhausen, 35, killed his three daughters - 11-year-old Amara, 8-year-old Sophie and 5-year-old Cecilia and was sane at the time

Admitted that he slashed their throats to hurt his ex-wife Jessica



The Wisconsin father who killed his three young girls to get revenge on his ex-wife has been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

A jury ruled that Aaron Schaffhausen- who called his wife saying ‘you can come home now, I killed the kids’- was sane at the time of the July 2012 triple murder but he was only today that he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Schaffhausen, 35, had admitted he killed 11-year-old Amara, 8-year-old Sophie and 5-year-old Cecilia at their River Falls home to get back at his ex-wife, but argued he had a mental defect that kept him from knowing it was wrong.

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Behind bars: Aaron Schaffhausen, seen here during the trial, was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without the chance of parole after killing his three young daughters

Horror: Amara Schaffhausen (center), 11, Sophie Schaffhausen (left), 8, and Cecilia Schaffhausen (right), 5, were found dead in their home and their father is charged with killing them during an unexpected visit

Life sentences were mandatory in each girl's death, but Schaffhausen had the prospect of supervised release after at least 20 years in prison.

That was rejected by St. Croix County Circuit Judge Howard Cameron, who said: 'I don't see mental illness as a mitigating factor.'

'This is a vicious, aggravated crime,' Cameron said before handing down the sentence.

The judge chose consecutive life sentences to send a message that 'each child is so important.'

Evidence showed that Schaffhausen texted his ex-wife on July 10, 2012, to ask for an unscheduled visit with the girls.

She consented but said he had to be gone before she got home because she didn't want to see him. The girls' baby sitter told investigators the children were excited when he arrived, and the sitter left.

He called his ex-wife, Jessica Schaffhausen, about two hours later, saying: 'You can come home now, I killed the kids.'

Amara, 11, five-year-old Cecilia and eight-year-old Sophie (left to right) three sisters who were tragically taken from this world far too soon

Police arrived to find the girls lying in their beds, their throats slit and their blankets pulled up to their necks. White T-shirts were tied around their necks. Cecilia's body also showed signs of strangulation.

As he did throughout his trial, Aaron Schaffhausen sat impassively as family members and attorneys read their statements.

Jessica Schaffhausen's sister, Mary Elizabeth Stotz, described Aaron Schaffhausen as 'the darkness, the boogeyman' that every child fears.

'He took their unconditional love for him, and used that love to lure them to get close enough (to) kill them,' Stotz said.

'Their last memory was what an evil killer their dad was.'

Eryn Schlotte, the girls' cousin, said Schaffhausen took away from her 'the future of seeing them smile, and what I had to look forward to when school got out.

Charged: Lawyers for Schaffhausen, 35, of Minot, North Dakota,initially tried to say that he was insane at the time of the triple murders but the court overruled that ploy

'I thought the world was a better place than this. Not a place where someone got killed before they were even in kindergarten or middle school.'

With family members crying and sharing tissues, lead prosecutor Gary Freyberg read his statement, saying Schaffhausen used the girls 'as pawns ... to make Jessica suffer.'

'How wrong is it to use his intellect, his size and his brute strength not to protect his children from danger, but to become the most dangerous person in the world to them?' he asked.

Freyberg said consecutive life sentences with no possibility of release was the only way for Jessica Schaffhausen to be free of fear that her ex-husband would someday come for her.

Schaffhausen argued that his client committed the crimes to help break his dependency on his ex-wife Jessica, seen here in an old photo with their youngest daughter Cecilia as a baby

Happier days: The prosecution argued that Aaron used his children (Amara at left and Sophie at right) as pawns