SHELBY, N.C.,None — Emotions ran high inside a Shelby courtroom on Wednesday, when a murder victim's family members confronted the man who confessed to the crime.
"I just wanted to know why he killed my sister," Sarah Hopper said. She cried as she recalled the look in Timothy Hoyle's eyes and the tone in his voice when he shouted, "I don't know," to her and other family members.
Hopper's sister, Elsie Webber, was killed in January 2008. Children found her body in an abandoned home and, weeks after the murder, Hoyle confessed. He admitted to kidnapping Webber and taking her to the abandoned home that he grew up in.
In court Wednesday, Hoyle pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in exchange for prosecutors agreeing to not seek the death penalty.
"All I could focus and say was, ‘Them the hands that stabbed my sister,'" Webber's sister, Patricia Camp, said.
"It was just emotions running high in the courtroom, because this was our first time seeing his face," Hopper said.
She said she and other family members are left with many questions.
"I still want to know, did she suffer? But I guess I'll never know," Hopper said.