THEY WERE ONLY 12 AND 13 — THEN A MURDER SENT TWO SIBLINGS INTO PRISON FOR THE YEARS THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN GROWING UP

Curtis Jones was 12 years old.

His sister, Catherine, was 13.

At an age when most children are worrying about school, friends, video games and what comes next, the two siblings were about to become the center of one of Florida’s most disturbing juvenile murder cases.

On January 6, 1999, inside their family home in Port St. John, Florida, their father’s girlfriend, Sonya Nicole Speights, was sH๏τ and killed.

She was only 29 years old.

According to investigators, Catherine initially fired the gun, and Curtis then picked it up and fired additional sH๏τs. The siblings fled into nearby woods before police captured them.

But what happened before that night made the case far more complicated than a simple murder story.

Investigators initially said jealousy was the motive.

The children, however, later gave a different explanation.

Catherine said that she and Curtis had been subjected to Sєxual abuse by a male relative living around the family. Child-welfare records later showed that authorities had previously received allegations concerning abuse in the household.

According to their later account, they believed the adults who were supposed to protect them had failed them.

Their alleged plan wasn’t limited to Speights.

They said they had intended to kill their father and the relative they accused of abusing them as well.

But after Speights was killed, the plan collapsed.

The two children ran.

And then came the extraordinary decision that made their case a national symbol of the debate over children being prosecuted as adults.

Curtis was only 12.

Catherine was 13.

They were initially charged with first-degree murder as adults, making them among the youngest people in the United States to face adult murder prosecution at the time.

They never went through a full murder trial.

Instead, the siblings accepted plea agreements, pleading guilty to second-degree murder.

The punishment was severe:

18 years in prison, followed by lifetime probation.

And so two children entered prison.

They would spend their teenage years there.

Their birthdays.

Their adolescence.

Their transition into adulthood.

Years that can never be recovered.

When Curtis finally walked out of prison in July 2015, he was 29 years old.

Catherine followed days later at 30.

They had entered prison as middle-school children.

They emerged as adults who had spent almost their entire formative lives behind bars.

Catherine later spoke publicly about the case, expressed regret for killing Speights, and described the abuse and fear she said had existed inside the household.

Curtis largely remained out of the public eye, although reports said he became an ordained minister while incarcerated. Catherine eventually married a man she had met through correspondence while she was imprisoned.

But there is no simple ending to this story.

Sonya Speights was a victim.

A 29-year-old woman lost her life.

Curtis and Catherine were also children who said they had been victims before they became perpetrators.

Neither truth erases the other.

And that is why this case remains so disturbing decades later.

Because the question isn’t only what did these two children do?

It is also:

What happens when children who say they were failed by every adult around them become responsible for an irreversible act themselves?

On January 6, 1999, three lives changed forever.

One was taken.

Two others disappeared behind prison walls.

And when they finally came out, they were no longer the children who had entered.