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‘Compelled to come’: Hundreds mourn slain teen at Glenside church

Grace Packer loved butterflies. She liked playing outside. She was full of "girly giggles." That's how the 14-year-old girl was remembered Monday at a memorial service, months after she was killed.

A distraught Rose Hunsicker, birth mother of Grace Packer, is escorted to the church after speaking to reporters.
A distraught Rose Hunsicker, birth mother of Grace Packer, is escorted to the church after speaking to reporters.Read moreED HILLE / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Grace Packer loved butterflies. She liked playing outside. She was full of "girly giggles."

That's how the 14-year-old girl was remembered Monday at a memorial service, months after she was killed.

But those who packed New Life Presbyterian Church in Glenside also addressed the horror of her death.

"We will not mince words: This was a wicked thing," pastor Mark Davis said to about 300 people. "This is an outrage."

Sara Packer, the teen's adoptive mother, and her boyfriend, Jacob Sullivan, were charged last week with killing the girl in a rape-murder fantasy and leaving her body in their attic for months before dismembering and dumping it. The remains were found in Luzerne County, Pa., on Halloween.

Both are jailed while they await a preliminary hearing this week.

Grace Packer was born in Norristown, but was taken from her birth parents more than a decade ago because of concerns about abuse by other family members in their home.

At Monday's service, her birth mother, Rose Hunsicker, sat at the front of the church. She left before the service ended, sobbing as friends and volunteers led her from the room.

She did not address the crowd, but other speakers shared glimpses from Grace's life: getting manicures with a friend, miniature golfing, loving cats, and reading and swimming.

Kayla Barnett, the daughter of one of the five local mothers who organized the memorial service, read a letter from an adult friend of Grace's.

"We would do anything to hear your voice," said the letter. "Grace, I miss your girly giggles."

The memorial also included songs, readings, and poems, and the reading of an obituary that described Grace: "While she deeply cared for others, her one true wish was to feel like she belonged."

Andrea Adams, another organizer, said the Abington Junior High student must be "remembered for the person that she was, and not the horrible way she died."

At the front of the church, among flowers and other photos, was a framed note Grace had written to a classmate: "Bobby, you are an amazing person."

Megan Dockstader, 16, of Abington, said she did not know Grace but her younger brother had classes with her. Dockstader attended the service with friends, some of whom remembered seeing Grace in the hallways at school.

"The fact that she could come to school and seem happy and then go home with all this stuff happening at home, it's crazy," said Dockstader.

Many others who filled the church to remember Grace had never met her. "We kind of felt compelled to come," said Abbe Sherman-Farber, who attended with her daughter, a 2016 graduate of Abington High School. She said she never imagined something so terrible could happen in her town.

How Grace could have been so abused and mistreated - while community members were unaware or unable to step in - loomed over the service.

"It would be wrong not to be angry," said Davis, wiping tears from his eyes.

That anger, he said, should also be used to expose child abuse and guard against it. "We need to be a little more vigilant, a little more engaged," he said.

lmccrystal@phillynews.com

610-313-8116 @LMcCrystal

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Jackie Schwanbeck read a letter from an adult friend of Grace’s.