Natasha Wallen Cornett (born January 26, 1979) is an American criminal currently serving a sentence of life without parole at the Bledsoe County Correctional Complex in Pikeville, Tennessee, for her involvement in the Lillelid murders.
In her book The Scarred Heart: Understanding and Identifying Kids Who Kill, forensic psychologist Helen Smith considers Natasha Cornett's troubled life as a warning of the failures of the school, mental health, and criminal justice systems in preventive treatment.
[5] By the time of her marriage, Cornett had firmly embraced the Goth subculture, wearing black clothing and listening to dark "doom-ridden music", as well as exhibiting interest in the occult and witchcraft.
The previous night (and not for the first time), Cornett had rented a room in a local economy lodging establishment, the Colley Motel (no longer in business[6]), for the purposes of drinking and smoking marijuana.
Cornett and her friends wanted to steal the family's van, having already discussed possibly car-jacking a bigger and more dependable vehicle to replace their cramped and likely unreliable Citation.
Two days after the shootings, the six perpetrators in the Lillelid family's stolen van were taken into custody by US Customs and Immigration officials in Arizona, having been ordered by Mexican police to return to the United States for entering Mexico without proper papers.
[2][4] Cornett accepted the volunteered pro bono legal services of attorney Eric Conn, a lawyer specializing in Social Security disability cases, not criminal defense.
[5] At Conn's instruction, Cornett made public statements in which she called herself the "Daughter of Satan" and claimed involvement with devil worship in preparation for an insanity defense.
In a 2007 article published in the Knoxville News Sentinel, Madonna Wallen stated that her daughter serves as a mentor for some fellow inmates as they work to earn their GEDs.