Adam Lee Price mug shot (Sarpy County Law Enforcement Center), Emily and Theodore Price (KETV screenshots)
A 38-year-old man in Nebraska will spend the rest of his days behind bars for killing both of his young children, smothering them before staging their bodies to make it look like they were sleeping by tucking them back into their beds in what authorities have maintained were undoubtedly premeditated acts.
A jury in Sarpy County on Thursday deliberated for just over two hours before finding Adam Lee Price guilty on two counts of first-degree murder in the horrific slayings of his 5-year-old daughter, Emily Price, and his 3-year-old son, Theodore Price, in May 2021, authorities confirmed to Law&Crime.
He will be facing a likely sentence of life in a state correctional facility without the chance for parole when he returns to court for his sentencing hearing on May 6.
Price’s arrest
As previously reported by Law&Crime, detectives with the Bellevue Police Department testified that they apprehended Price in California, several days after the children’s bodies were discovered inside his home in Bellevue, Nebraska. Surveillance footage reportedly showed Price, on the day of the murders, going to a bank near his home and withdrawing a large sum of cash, then returning to his house for a short while before heading to California.
Following his arrest, Price confessed to planning and committing the murders during a seven-hour interrogation with detectives.
The detective recalled asking Price, “Killing the kids was more about you than killing the kids?”
Price responded, “Yes, it was not a spur of the moment thing.”
The detective further testified Price showed no remorse when asked if he “could see doing the day over again.”
Price responded, “I would do it again,” the detective testified.
The medical examiner who conducted the autopsies on Emily and Theodore determined the cause of death was asphyxiation. That doctor told authorities that killing in the manner that Price killed his children takes significant time and effort.
Medical experts that it “takes about a minute for someone to be rendered unconscious and then a minute to two minutes after that to be killed” by smothering, prosecutors said.
The murders
Officers with the Bellevue Police Department twice responded to calls for a wellness check on Price’s home in the 2700 block of Alberta Avenue on the evening of May 15 and the early morning of May 16.
The children’s mother, Mary Nielsen, was concerned and called 911 after not hearing from her children for several days. She and Price were divorced and shared custody of the children. A provision of the custody-sharing agreement required each parent to have daily contact with the children when they were in the custody of the other parent.
“If anyone has heard from Adam or seen him or the kids … or seen him post on Facebook in the last 24 hours can you please let me know? He’s supposed to contact me every day when he has the kids per court order and I haven’t heard from him in two days,” Nielsen wrote on her Facebook page.
The children were supposed to be with Price in Nebraska for a week-long visit.
The police were called back to Price’s a third time, at 11:30 a.m. on May 16, when a neighbor found the children after walking into Price’s unlocked house at the request of Nielsen.
Police said Price was not at the home when the children’s bodies were found. He was located hours later in Pacifica, California, where authorities took him into custody. He was extradited, arrived in Nebraska on May 27, and has remained in the Sarpy County Jail on $2.5 million bond ever since.
“I hope he suffers for eternity,” Nielsen wrote in a Facebook post following Price’s arrest. “Every single day for the rest of his life I hope he gets his. I’m so sorry Emi and Teddy. You didn’t deserve this. Your mother didn’t deserve this.”
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