On the afternoon of January 20, 1988, 14-year-old Jennifer Lynn Colhouer stepped off her school bus and walked home, just as she did every weekday. A freshman at Land O' Lakes High School in Florida, Jennifer had recently gotten her braces off and was looking forward to a Sadie Hawkins dance. She lived with her parents, Tom and Cheryl, and two younger siblings, Jeremy and Megan, in a two-story, sky-blue house in the Lake Padgett Estates neighborhood that was their dream home.
The family was a normal, happy one, enjoying life in their lakeside community. But the sense of peace and security they cherished was about to be irrevocably shattered by a chance encounter with a predator.
That afternoon, a drifter from Ohio named Michael Lee Lockhart was cruising through the neighborhood in a stolen red Corvette. He spotted Jennifer, who was home alone, and managed to get inside the house. Lockhart, a serial killer in the midst of a multi-state crime spree, armed himself with an 11-inch knife from the Colhouer's kitchen. He chased the terrified teenager upstairs into her eight-year-old brother's bedroom. There, amidst scattered Christmas toys, he bound, raped, strangled, and brutally stabbed her. Later that evening, around 6:15 p.m., young Jeremy came home from feeding the ducks and ran upstairs to get his soccer gear. He switched on his bedroom light and made a discovery that would haunt him for the rest of his life: the body of his beloved older sister. The family was so traumatized they never spent another night in that house.
The savage murder of the young girl, described as one of the most heinous crimes in Pasco County history, terrified the community. The investigation soon connected Jennifer’s killing to a similar case from three months prior. In Griffith, Indiana, 16-year-old Windy Gallagher had been murdered in a strikingly similar fashion. The perpetrator of that crime was also Michael Lee Lockhart. His cross-country spree of violence, which included robberies and assaults, came to an end on March 22, 1988. While trying to arrest Lockhart in Beaumont, Texas, for driving the stolen Corvette, police officer Paul Hulsey Jr. was shot and killed. Lockhart was apprehended after a high-speed chase, and evidence found in the car linked him to his other crimes.
Lockhart was a serial killer who received death sentences in three different states: Texas, Indiana, and Florida. He was first convicted and sentenced to death for the capital murder of Officer Hulsey in Texas. He then received a death sentence in Indiana for Windy Gallagher's murder. In Florida, on October 26, 1989, he pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Jennifer Colhouer. During his sentencing hearing, Lockhart implored the jury to give him the death penalty, a wish they granted after just 20 minutes of deliberation. While he once boasted of killing more than two dozen people, he later claimed responsibility for only the three murders for which he was convicted.
The Colhouer family endured years of legal proceedings and profound grief. They were supported by victim advocacy groups who helped them navigate the overwhelming court process. Jennifer's father, Tom, later spoke of their invaluable assistance, saying, "It just would have been unbearable without them." The trauma deeply affected Jennifer's siblings. Her brother Jeremy suffered from nightmares for years and was inspired by the detectives on the case to become a Pasco County sheriff's deputy, vowing to protect other families. Her younger sister Megan, who was only three when Jennifer died, struggled for years, believing she too would die at age 14.
On December 9, 1997, nearly a decade after he murdered Jennifer, Michael Lee Lockhart was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas. Tom Colhouer chose to witness the execution to ensure the man who destroyed his family's life was truly gone. "I didn't want to do it," he said, "but I felt I needed to do it. I physically wanted to see him gone so I could know he won't be back." While Lockhart's execution brought a close to the legal chapter of their nightmare, the family's pain and sense of loss endured. They moved from their home after the murder but eventually returned to Land O' Lakes, keeping Jennifer's memory alive through photographs and cherished mementos scattered throughout their new house.
