A mother has been sentenced to life imprisonment in Berkeley, West Virginia, U.S after pleading guilty to the murder of her 4-year-old daughter, Haley.
33-year-old Rebakah Weikle confessed to cutting her daughter’s throat after becoming jealous of the attention the child received from her husband.
She was sentenced on Thursday, April 30, 2026 in Summers County Circuit Court after admitting to first-degree m8rder and child abuse.
The victim was stabbed in the bedroom of Weikle’s home in the Forest Hill area of West Virginia on July 11, 2022, or sometime in the early hours of July 12, 2022.
“I want everybody to know how evil the person is and what she has done. She k!lled a four-year-old baby, my baby. She was jealous that I was paying attention to her, doing what I was supposed to do, watching out for her. I was trying to keep her safe,” Haley’s father, Rusty Weikle, said.
The prosecution asserted that Weikle became obsessively jealous of Haley because of the attention her father gave her and began researching ways to harm her child.
Summers County Prosecuting Attorney Chris Lefler said the girl’s father and Haley’s two brothers went to bed, and then “it was just Haley and Rebakah that were up, and Rebakah had told her to go to bed, and at that point made the decision to retrieve the knife from the kitchen and decided to do it then.”
“She used either a blanket or a pillow to cover Haley’s mouth, and she specifically said so that the father would not hear, and the nature of the wound—it was fatal very quickly. It wasn’t a wound where she languished,” Lefler told PEOPLE.
After committing the act, Weikle allegedly cleaned and hid the knife, then used the laundry machine before going to bed, per the publication.
“She stated that she then went to the bedroom, disrobed, and hid her clothing in a pile of clothes, which we were able to find on the execution of a search warrant. She then woke her husband up, and they had sex. Her husband then went back to sleep. She was on her phone all night, just doing various things, and once again, around 5:00 a.m., started doing more pointed searches of things relevant to a throat being cut, fingerprints, and similar topics,” Lefler said.
When she woke in the morning, Rebakah Weikle told her husband that Haley wasn’t awake, and when he asked her to go wake the child, Rebakah Weikle said Haley was dead, per the publication.
Rusty Weikle went to the bedroom and told Rebakah Weikle to call 911, according to the report.
She entered the numbers into the phone, but a call wasn’t placed until Rusty Weikle took the phone from her and did it himself.
Rebakah Weikle attempted to convince law enforcement that her husband had k!lled Haley to cover up alleged sexual abuse, but she later admitted that was a lie as part of her plea.
“She revealed that she was solely responsible for this, and she has now taken responsibility for committing this. In fact, she admitted that she did this in such a way that it was hidden from Rusty and actually took steps to ensure that he did not hear why she was committing this act,” Lefler said.
Rebakah Weikle received two life sentences after pleading guilty to the following charges.
Weikle will be eligible for parole after 30 years.
According to WOAY, the court acknowledged that Rebakah Weikle is likely to die in prison.
