Lisa Reardon Pleads Guilty

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commit murder and use of a firearm in a felony.

Asked by Judge David Swartz what happened on the night of August 21, 2009, at her father's house in Dexter Township, she replied with an unwavering voice: "I had bought a gun. I drove to his house, and I shot him."

The judge asked: "Did you intend to kill him?"

"Yes, I did," said Lisa Reardon firmly.

The prosecuting attorney announced the two sides had reached a sentencing agreement--that Reardon, author of three unflinchingly explicit crime novels filled with family tragedies, would serve four to seventeen years in prison for repeatedly firing a shotgun at her father, George Hicks.

The prosecutor's office had filed papers quoting Reardon's psychiatrist as saying she had been "severely traumatized during childhood and early adolescence" and quoting a message to her best friend indicating she had been plotting her father's demise in the belief that she had to protect her nieces from him.