Woman at Center of Infamous Killing to be Released from Miami-Dade Correctional Institution

Now 30, Valessa Robinson is scheduled to be released from prison in Florida on Friday.

Valessa Robinson was 15 when she helped her friends kill her mother in a Tampa suburb in 1998 and 17 when she was convicted of third-degree murder.

Now 30, Robinson is scheduled to be released from prison in Florida on Friday.

The Florida Department of Corrections said Tuesday that Robinson will be released from Homestead Correctional Institution in Miami-Dade County.

Department of Corrections Spokeswoman Jessica Cary said that as with any release date, Robinson's scheduled departure from prison can be subject to change.

The murder and Robinson's subsequent trial made the teen infamous. During trial, her defense attorney dressed her in schoolgirl clothes. Gone was Valessa's previous attire of baggy jeans and colored nail polish. The brutal murder and the lengthy trial were covered extensively in local and national media.

Vicki Robinson was choked, injected with bleach and stabbed to death in the family's upscale home. Valessa Robinson, her then-boyfriend Adam Davis, and a third teen, Jon Whispel, had taken LSD the night of the murder, then stole her car and credit cards and set off on a cross-country escape.

Robinson had been planning to send Valessa, then 15, to a Christian boarding school for troubled girls to separate her from Davis, then a 19-year-old with a criminal record.

During the trial, Whispel testified that Valessa was the one who proposed killing her mother and then held her down during the attack. But during the trial, Valessa's attorney portrayed her as a naive, love-starved girl controlled by Davis and drugs.

Valessa was sentenced in circuit court to 15 years for her third-degree murder conviction and five years for auto theft.

Her former boyfriend, Adam Davis, is on death row for the murder and their friend, Jon Whispel, is serving a 25-year sentence.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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