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In Waukesha, Wisconsin, an 18-year-old who took his parents’ lives to finance a plot to assassinate former President Donald Trump using a drone bomb received a life sentence on Thursday.
Nikita Casap admitted guilt in January to two charges of first-degree intentional homicide after fatally shooting his mother, Tatiana Casap, and his stepfather, Donald Mayer, in 2025. As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors dismissed seven additional charges, including corpse concealment and theft.
Judge: Casap may never change after ‘horrific’ crimes
Under Wisconsin law, a conviction for first-degree intentional homicide mandates a life sentence. During Thursday’s sentencing, presided over by Judge Ralph Ramirez, the primary consideration was whether Casap might eventually qualify for parole.
Deeming Casap’s crimes as “horrific” and “beyond explanation,” Judge Ramirez imposed two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, referred to as extended supervision in Wisconsin’s legal terminology. He remarked on the uncertainty of predicting when or if Casap might undergo meaningful reform.
“I have decided against granting eligibility for extended release because I cannot determine if or when a substantial and profound transformation will occur,” Ramirez stated.
Mother, stepfather killed in their home
According to a criminal complaint, investigators believe Casap shot his stepfather and mother at their home in the village of Waukesha on or around Feb. 11, 2025.
He lived with the decomposing bodies for two weeks before fleeing across the country in his stepfather’s SUV with $14,000 in cash, jewelry, passports, his stepfather’s gun and the family dog, according to the complaint. He was eventually arrested during a traffic stop in Kansas on Feb. 28 after four days on the run.
Federal authorities have accused Casap of planning his parents’ murders, buying a drone and explosives and sharing his plans with others, including a Russian speaker. They said in a federal search warrant that he wrote a manifesto calling for Trump’s assassination and was in touch with others about his plot to overthrow the U.S. government
“The killing of his parents appeared to be an effort to obtain the financial means and autonomy necessary to carrying out his plan,” that warrant said.
Detectives found several messages on Casap’s cellphone from January 2025 in which Casap asks how long he will have to hide before he is relocated to Ukraine. An unknown individual responded in Russian, the complaint said, but the document doesn’t say what that person told Casap. In another message Casap asks: “So while in Ukraine, I’ll be able to live a normal life? Even if it’s found out I did it?”
Prosecutors insist Casap too dangerous to ever be released
District Attorney Lesli Boese told the judge Thursday that Casap was too dangerous to ever be released from prison.
Pulling from an interview Casap gave to the FBI, Boese said that Casap and his mother moved to the United States from the Republic of Moldova when Casap was a grade-schooler but he became increasingly addicted to what she called “disturbing websites” as he grew older. She didn’t elaborate, but at one point said he had been researching serial killers and school shootings.
Boese said Casap developed a plan in late 2024 to target Trump with an AK-47 rifle attached to a drone. The teen later decided he wanted to drop explosives on Trump from a drone and then flee by ship to Ukraine, where he planned to hide for a decade, according to the district attorney. Casap told agents he wouldn’t have cared how many people around Trump got hurt during the assassination attempt.
He started talking with two people online who offered to sell him the drone and the explosives. He sent one of them $8,700 in bitcoin from his stepfather Mayer’s account without realizing they were scamming him and there was never a drone or any explosives, Boese said.
“He walked right into it,” she said.
Defense attorney asks for mercy
Casap’s attorney, Paul Rifelj, asked Ramirez to make Casap eligible for parole after 20 years. He said that news of a doctor who drove his car into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, in December 2024 sent Casap into a rage. The teen decided then that he wanted to change the world by killing a politician, Rifelj said.
The two contacts who promised to help him kill Trump convinced him that he was part of a larger military strategy, offering him direction and purpose at a time when he was becoming isolated at school, according to Rifelj.
“Children are more than their worst deeds,” he said.
Casap: ‘I thought I was part of a revolution’
Casap appeared to tremble as he listened to both sides make their cases. He gave a tearful speech, saying that he loved his mother and he was worried about her all the time, even when she was reaching for something on a high shelf. He said he wasn’t as close with Mayer, but Mayer still treated him like a son.
But he became obsessed with hateful thoughts.
“I thought I was part of a revolution,” he said. “I thought I was part of a war. I told myself bad things had to happen.”