18-Year-Old Girl Convicted of Killing Father to Speak Out About Crime in New Interview

Tabitha Messina and Carlos Christopher are one-time teen lovers now serving life in prison for the double murder.

As featured in Killer Couples, Tabitha Messina was the daughter of a hard-partying father and an exotic dancer mother, the latter of whom was described by Cover’s sister as “an absent mother.” Following years of the mother’s alleged uncontrollable substance abuse, the parents split up, and Richard Messina would eventually start dating another exotic dancer, Sandra Cover.

Cover quit her job as an adult entertainer to stay home with Tabitha Messina and her brother, but things weren’t always easy. Authorities were regularly called to the home due to domestic fights and noise complaints, laying the backdrop to Tabitha Messina’s tumultuous life.

“I always used to push my dad to a certain limit to see how much he would take from me,” Tabitha Messina once said, according to Ohio’s The News-Herald.

Carlos Christopher, who spent his earliest years in the favelas of Brazil, also had a rough upbringing. Before being adopted by a wholesome American family at 8 years old, he was born inside a jail, the son of a violent gang leader.

“His father killed many people,” South Euclid police detective David Volek said in 2013. “His father would take Carlos along with him when he’d do his killings, so Carlos could see it and witness it.”

Tabitha Messina and Christopher had what was described as a hot and heavy relationship, but they called things off before the night of the murders, following Richard Messina’s disapproval at his daughter dating a man with darker skin, according to Killer Couples. On the night of July 28, 2007, Tabitha Messina was dating Jason Gaylord, and Carlos Christopher was then dating Tammy Tabak.

South Euclid officers found Richard Messina’s body “in a twisted position” beside his bed, “with bedclothes placed over his face, and a cell phone and a crucifix by this head,” according to Christoper’s motion. The male victim sustained “six chop wounds” from what was later discovered to be a hatchet.

Cover was found dead on the other side of the bed, the victim of blunt force trauma inflicted with a crowbar.

The use of two weapons led authorities to deduce that there were two attackers.

The home was then ransacked, and Richard Messina’s GMC Jimmy SUV and Corvette were nowhere to be found.

Tabitha Messina, Christopher, Gaylord, and a third male took the vehicles and left the state. By the time news of the murders reached them, the friends were in Virginia, and Gaylord and the third male — neither of whom were involved with the murders — took the Corvette back to Ohio, while the former lovers had plans to continue to Georgia, according to court records.

Tabitha Messina and Carlos Christopher were found on the morning of July 30, 2007, after Avery County officials in North Carolina were alerted to the stolen vehicle in which the suspects were sleeping in front of a motel, according to Snapped: Killer Couples.

Christopher was “contrite” in his interviews with police, according to detectives, and he confessed that it was Tabitha Messina who initiated the attack when striking Cover with the crowbar and that he axed Richard Messina to death after he woke. As covered in the series, Tabitha Messina allegedly told Christopher that her father had raped her — unsubstantiated accusations she later recanted.

Eventually, both suspects were charged and convicted of aggravated murder and other burglary- and robbery-related charges.

Online records with Ohio’s Department of Rehabilitation and Correction show Carlos Christopher is serving life without the possibility of parole at the Trumbull Correctional Institute. Tabitha Messina, who was sentenced to 60 years to life for her role in the killings, is currently housed at the Dayton Correctional Institution in Dayton, Ohio.

She will be eligible for parole in 2067 when she is 88 years old.