CONCORD, NH – A teen is set to plead guilty on Friday to killing his sister-in-law and his two young nephews in their Northfield home in the summer of 2022.
In Merrimack County Superior Court on Tuesday, Eric Sweeney, now 19, filed a notice to plead guilty to three counts of second-degree murder and one charge of falsifying physical evidence.
On Aug. 3, 2022, Sweeney allegedly shot and killed his sister-in-law Kassandra Sweeney, 25, and her sons Benjamin, 4, and Mason, 1, in their Northfield home. The falsifying physical evidence accuses him of getting rid of the gun, which police later recovered along Interstate 93.
A plea hearing is set for Friday at 9 a.m. in Superior Court.
The plea is what is known as a “naked plea,” in that a sentence has not been negotiated with prosecutors. A second-degree murder conviction carries up to life in prison.
Sweeney was 16-years-old at the time of the murders. He was living with his brother, Sean Sweeney, and his family in their 56 Wethersfield Dr. home in Northfield. Kassandra and her young sons were found shot to death in the kitchen on the morning of Aug. 3, 2022.
According to court records, Sean Sweeney left for work early that morning. Kassandra communicated with him, using her cellphone, sending three videos of the children “engaging in playful behavior” with her.
In those videos, the little boys are wearing the same clothing in which police found them dead inside the home with their mother less than an hour after the last video was taken.
At 11 a.m. that day, Eric Sweeney had left the house in the same pickup truck recorded in one of Kassandra’s earlier videos. Sweeney had her cell phone with him, the same one with which she took all three videos.
At 11:20 a.m., he called his brother, telling him an intruder had broken into the house and killed Kassandra and the children.
When he later spoke with investigators from the New Hampshire State Police Major Crime Unit, Sweeney denied committing the murders. Investigators maintain they found gunshot residue on Sweeney’s hands and on the steering wheel of the pickup truck.
Sean Sweeney told police he had two unloaded guns he kept in a box under his bed. When detectives searched the home, one gun was missing from the box. It was later recovered alongside Interstate 93, the same route Eric Sweeney had taken when he left the home. Investigators were able to track his movement through his sister-in-law’s cell phone that he took.
Sweeney was a juvenile at the time of the murders and his name was not made public until after a court certified him as an adult to stand trial.