BIRTH: June 12, 1992
DEATH: July 24, 2009
Lily Belle Burk ~ Age 17
Lily, 17, was beaten and her throat slashed after hours of trying in vain to get money for a parolee who abducted her off her credit card. What Lily and her abductor didn’t know was that the credit card wasn’t set up to get cash.
The next day Lily’s body was found inside her black Volvo in a downtown parking lot. Fingerprints found in her car led police to 50-year-old transient with a violent criminal history.
Lily left her home in about 2 p.m. to pick up some papers for her mother, a professor at Southwestern University School of Law. About 15 minutes after she arrived at the school, Lily was approached by a man and abducted. The teen and her kidnapper then drove to an automatic teller machine where she tried several times to get money. The attempts failed because her credit card was not set up to be used as an ATM card.
Over the next hour, Lily called both of her parents to ask how to use the card and was told by her father that it could not be used at an ATM. She didn’t tell them that she was in distress. She reportedly told her father she needed money to buy shoes and was told to come home. Burk then made arrangements with her father to go to their home to pick up an unspecified amount of money but she never made it home.
There were obvious signs of a struggle inside her car, and Lily appeared to have head injuries after striking the passenger side of the front windshield. Lily’s preliminary cause of death appeared to be blunt force trauma. It was later found during her autopsy that she had injuries from head to toe, including a fatal wound to her neck. Lily also had two superficial wounds on her lower neck and injuries consistent with bite marks on the left side of her face and left ear, along with bruising on her back and contusions on her knees and feet.
Charles Samuel pleaded guilty first-degree murder, kidnapping to commit robbery, second-degree robbery, attempted first-degree ATM robbery, carjacking and kidnapping for carjacking. He admitted special circumstance allegations of murder during a carjacking, kidnapping and robbery. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. He took the plea to avoid getting a death sentence.
OTHER LINKS:
Girl, 17, found slain in car near downtown L.A.
Teen’s death investigated as homicide
Charlie Samuel arrested for the murder of 17 year old Lily Burk
Lily Burk’s Alleged Killer Charged with New Felony Counts at Preliminary Hearing
Stolen Lives 