Rachel Drafta’s body was found shot to death in the driveway of her parents’ house. This scared the people of Portage, Michigan, which is usually a quiet place.
At first, the police didn’t know what was going on, but they soon found out that Rachel’s then-boyfriend had a jealous ex-girlfriend named Theresa Petto. The show “Deadly Women: Hot Tempers, Cold Hearts” on Investigation Discovery tells the story of the brutal murder and shows how the police investigation led them right to Theresa. Let’s find out more about the crime by looking into the details, shall we?
How did Theresa Petto live?
Theresa Petto lived in Hastings, Michigan, and had been through a lot of bad things in her life. In fact, reports say that Theresa’s three-week-old child, whose father was her then-boyfriend Brent Kik, was found dead in her apartment under suspicious circumstances four years before Rachel was killed. The cause of the child’s death was found to be a broken skull. The police never charged Theresa with the child’s death, but the show said that her relationship with Brent got worse after the death, and they eventually decided to go their separate ways.
Brent moved on with his life and started making plans for a better future, but the show said that Theresa couldn’t get over her ex-boyfriend. She also started to feel jealous and would often get angry when she found out that her ex was seeing other women. Investigators think that her jealousy is what led her to follow Brent, which is how she found out about his relationship with Rachel Drafta.
At the time Rachel was killed, she and Brent were pretty close and had even talked about getting married. But they had no idea that a terrible thing was about to destroy all of their hopes and dreams. Theresa couldn’t handle her jealousy any longer, so on June 24, 2015, she bought a gun and went to Rachel’s parents’ house with it. Once she got to the scene, she saw the victim in the driveway and started shooting at her without being careful. When the police got there, Rachel was unconscious and the person who did it was nowhere to be found. The victim was taken to a local hospital right away, but her injuries were too bad, and Rachel died two days later while she was still getting care. After that, an autopsy showed that the bullet wounds were what killed her.
During the first few days of the investigation, there were not many leads to follow. However, the police soon found out that Rachel was dating Brent, who was still being followed by Theresa Petto, his ex-girlfriend. Even though Theresa said at first that she had nothing to do with the crime and insisted that she was innocent, detectives found enough evidence to show that she was guilty, so they arrested her.
Is Theresa Petto still alive or dead?
When Theresa was brought to court, she first said she wasn’t guilty, but she soon changed her mind and said she was guilty but mentally ill. In 2016, she was given a sentence of life in prison without the chance to get out. In 2019, Theresa asked for a new trial and even tried to get out of her guilty plea, but both requests were turned down. After that, Theresa spent her days in prison. In March 2022, word started to spread that she had died. Even though the news was officially announced on March 14, we still don’t know what caused her death.
