The Pennsylvania family torn apart by a partial murder-suicide pact allegedly enacted by its matriarch and her teen daughter had recently pulled its kids from school and limited contact with outside relatives to cryptic texts about demons and the afterlife, a report said Thursday.
“I really wish I could ask my sister what happened,” Walidah Campbell told Philly.com, referring to Shana Decree, who’s accused along with her teenage daughter, Dominique, of murdering five relatives inside their Morrisville apartment. “It all happened so fast.”
Campbell, who lives in Georgia, told the outlet she first knew something was amiss when niece Naa’Irah Smith didn’t reply to a “Happy Birthday” text sent on Feb. 11.
The unanswered text was part of a larger withdrawal by the family into their cramped apartment in recent weeks, their increasingly rare conversations with concerned relatives rife with allusions to demons and the “pearly gates,” the report said.
A family friend had previously told The Post that the clan believed the end of the world was imminent, and Shana’s estranged ex-husband reportedly said that they had descended into “some type of cult that they materialized online.”
Shana had also recently pulled her son, 13-year-old Damon Decree Jr., out of school, and her sister, Jamilla Campbell, did the same with her twin 9-year-old girls, Imani and Erika Allen, the report said.
Sometime between Saturday and early Monday, cops say the family’s bizarre downward spiral ended when Shana and Dominique allegedly murdered five relatives inside their three-bedroom apartment: Naa’Irah, 25; Jamila, 42; and the three children.
Shana’s 17-year-old son, Joshua, was apparently only spared because he had recently tired of his family’s strange behavior and left home to stay with friends.
The massacre was uncovered when a caseworker from Bucks County Children and Youth — who had been investigating the family ever since the kids stopped going to school, according to Philly.com — asked a building worker to open up the apartment on Monday.
Shana and Dominique were in bed, barely breathing, the five bodies strewn around them.
Dominique, 19, had “very superficial” cuts to her neck, which were apparently self-inflicted, Philly.com reported, citing Morrisville Police Chief George McClay.
The injury lends credence to cops’ working theory that Shana and Dominique were allegedly in the middle of a mass murder-suicide — bolstered by Shana telling investigators that the victims “wanted to die,” according to a legal affidavit.
Both women are charged with five counts of homicide and one count of conspiracy.
“Shana is such a good-hearted woman,” Walidah Campbell told Philly.com. “I don’t understand how she went from that to this. What we’re seeing isn’t her.”
For lack of another explanation for her relatives’ uncharacteristic behavior, Walidah agrees that they likely fell under the sway of a dark, outside influence.
“This is not normal for them. They were all very sweet, intelligent people,” she told the outlet. “I think it was something they got into, something that took over them.”
