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Daisy Markley spotted her child’s limp body lying on the edge of their bed. One pill was needed to kill Jack McMurley, a transgender teen from Santa Clarita, who overdoses with fentanyl a few months after graduating from high school.
“I will never forget the sound of my wife screaming to call me upstairs,” Matt Markley recalled the death of a child in November 2022. “I dropped everything and ran. It was my worst nightmare.”
It’s a nightmare that Markleys wakes up every morning. But on Monday, the grieving parents received some relief when US District Judge Steven V. Wilson took responsibility for the six-year prison term to the drug dealer who was responsible for Jack’s death.
This sentence caused a vigorous mix of emotions for the couple.
On the one hand, they were grateful to have lost their loved one to Fentanyl and become one of the few parents who could see the dealer being placed behind the bar.
Meanwhile, they were furious that Wilson sliced the government’s recommended 12-year sentence in half. A shorter ruling caught parents off guard after the dealer’s own lawyer recommended 10 years, but Wilson said he had little time as the defendant is a low-level dealer with a history of tough upbringing and addiction.
“We are absolutely disappointed,” Daisy said. “We were expecting more, but we know there are a lot of other parents who didn’t get justice.”
Justice said that he was “served to a minimum” for Jacks, Matt jumped out of his coat and said he paused the room in silence when the door was slammed behind him.
Matt and Daisy Merkley were disappointed by the dealer’s sentence for giving the child fentanyl-covered pills. That was less than what was suggested by the dealer’s own lawyers.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
“It was pretty much harmful because we couldn’t send a message to other dealers,” he said after the day.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Bobby Dean said the success of drug dealers’ prosecutors over an overdose death is relatively rare and relatively rare.
However, it has become more common in Los Angeles since the Sheriff’s Department launched an Opioid Overdose Response Task Force in 2022 and began investigating these deaths with the same rigour as homicide investigations.
“Historically, for many departments, deaths from overdose have been treated as accidental. It’s sad, but that’s what it is,” said Dean, who led the task force and supported the Jacks case. “We’re going to take another approach to identify who provided the fatal dose and who will hold it accountable.”
The goal is to get family justice and disrupt the drug network by ensuring long sentences that serve as a deterrent to other dealers, he said. His team currently has around 35 cases at various stages of criminal prosecution.
Jax dealer Skylar Lynn Mitchell has approved intentionally selling the Percocet Pill covered in fake fentanyl that killed Jax in 2022. At the time, Jax was 18 and Mitchell was 23.
According to court documents, Mitchell began selling drugs to teens in Santa Clarita when she was 16 years old. She also admitted that she witnessed her friend overdosed and dying of fentanyl before selling the deadly pill.
In July, she signed a plea deal on one property with the intention of distributing fentanyl.
Prosecutor, our atty. Kedar Bhatia recommended a 12-year sentence and said her “crazy crime” gave her profits a priority for her lifetime.
Daisy Merkley wears a ladybug necklace for Jacks.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
“Long jail time is important to send a general deterrent message. Those who sell fentanyl will face meaningful punishment,” he wrote in his recommendation of the sentence.
However, Wilson saw the situation differently, citing a set of factors as justifications for Mitchell’s traumatic upbringing in the foster care system, histories of addiction, and short sentences about “believeable regret.”
“The defendant was a low-level dealer selling drugs to provide her own addiction,” Wilson said. “If the victim hadn’t tragically overdose and died, he probably wouldn’t be here.”
Mitchell said she took “full responsibility” for her crimes, called her time in custody “blessings,” and helped her to calm down and put her on a better path in life.
“There’s no day when you don’t think about what happened,” she told the court. “If I can give my life to get the victim back, I’ll do it with Heartbeat.” Her six-year prison sentence will be followed by a three-year supervised release.
Wilson questioned why a low-level fentanyl dealer should be sentenced to 12 years in prison if there are many high-level dealers who are likely to be liable for many deaths not pursued by US law firms.
Dean told the Times that the Sheriff’s Office doesn’t care if dealers are considered high or low levels, investigating cases that lead to death.
“If you provide a fatal dose, we don’t care if it’s one or a million tablets. We’ll definitely put the case together, present it to the prosecution and put you in jail,” he said.
He saw the sentence against Mitchell as a victory, and said his team saw evidence that the sentence against dealers and the sentence against small ones spread fear through the local drug trafficking network.
Cultural changes centered on dealing with overdose deaths also appear to be ongoing at the LA County District Attorney’s Office in New Zeading. Atty. Nathan Hochman vowed to prosecute fentanyl dealers more aggressively than his predecessor, George Gascon. During his campaign, Hochman advocated that if someone dies as a result of the drug they sell, he would file a claim for voluntary manslaughter or murder from a fentanyl dealer.
Matt said the Sheriff’s Office had presented Jacks’ case to the U.S. law firm after learning that Gascon’s office would only pursue unwilling manslaughter charges, which would likely be sentenced to two to four years in prison.
Matt said he appreciated the Sheriff’s Office’s “heroic efforts,” but without that there would have been no hope of justice for Jax. Most other people in the support group of parents who have lost their loved ones to fentanyl must live with the knowledge that the child murderer is still there, he said.
Matt Markley holds a poster with a photo of Jacks, who passed away shortly after graduating from high school.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
Among those parents is Amber Royer of Hemet, whose son Richard died – like Jax – died of a fake percoset pill covered in fentanyl in 2020. He was 18 years old.
“The police department did not investigate, they didn’t grab his phone, they didn’t consider looking at where the product came from,” she said. “There was nothing and I feel the system has failed my son.”
Sam Chapman, who overdose by his 16-year-old son, Sammy Berman Chapman, in 2021, said he was not charged with being charged with a dealer bringing fentanyl-layer pills to a Santa Monica home “like delivering pizza.” Now, Chapman and his wife have to tackle the fact that “Sammy’s murderer is still walking down the streets of Los Angeles,” but their son will never walk again.
Jacks, Sammy and Richard purchased drugs they killed on social media, as is common in cases of teen overdose deaths.
The 64 families who lost their loved ones to fentanyl are suing Snap Inc., claiming that the Santa Monica Company is in charge of drug sales to teens being promoted through the app Snapchat.
In court, Daisy said Jack’s death serves as a warning that “children are available, social media is not safe, and experimenting with drugs can be fatal.”
She described Jax as a “magical, unique and colorful” person with empathetic, deeply emotional, generous flaws.
Jax, who is in her early teens, told her parents that the gender assigned at birth did not feel right. Daisy and Matt endorsed Jax, who embraced non-binary gender identity, but said they didn’t accept the outside world.
Jax struggled to find his place in the world as a transgender teenager struggling with anxiety and depression that had worsened during pandemic quarantine. Jax’s parents knew they were struggling, but were unaware of the extent of their drug use and continued to fight feelings of guilt on a daily basis.
“The idea that I am a failure as a mother, as a doctor and as a human being is never far away,” said Daisy, who works as a family doctor. “I know I will mourn Jax until the last breath of death.”
Jax was worshipped by animals and was a “butterfly magnet,” Daisy said. Every time she sees polka dots flying around, she knows it’s a way to say hi to Jax.
Daisy Merkley holds a reminder near Jacks. It’s a small bone with ash.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
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