‘This is a murder story’: Warrants detail items, note found in home where mother, son were killed

Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic details. Reader discretion is advised.

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SARATOGA SPRINGS — Newly unsealed search warrants offer previously undisclosed details about the killings of a Saratoga Springs mother and her 8-year-old son in March. The documents also offer a glimpse into the direction of the investigation.

About 10:15 a.m. on March 28, Saratoga Springs police were called to Jessica Orton Lyman’s townhome, 1244 N. Willowbrook Lane, after Lyman’s 17-year-old daughter just arrived home, “where she found her mother and 8-year-old brother lying on the floor in her mother’s bedroom,” according to court records.

Detectives determined both Lyman and her son, 8-year-old Eli Painter, had been shot. Eli was pronounced dead at the scene. Lyman, 44, died from her injuries a couple of days later. Police are calling the case a double homicide.

Evidence found in Lyman’s home

Lyman’s daughter called 911 and reported she found her mother and younger brother, Eli, “lying in bed, unconscious and bleeding from their heads.” She reported that her 15-year-old brother might also be at the home, according to the search warrant affidavits.

When officers arrived, they observed Lyman and Eli had both been shot in the head. Eli was declared dead. Further evidence of possible sexual assault was found at the scene, according to the warrant. Lyman was taken to the hospital.

While police talked to the 15-year-old boy, he said that he’d been in his room taking a nap and didn’t hear anything. An officer asked him if there were weapons in the home, and the boy said he wasn’t aware of any “guns” in the home, the warrant states.

“At that point, (the teen) had not been told by EMS or police officers that the incident involved a gun or gunshot wounds,” police wrote in the warrant.

Lyman’s daughter and the 15-year-old brother were interviewed at a Children’s Justice Center, where the boy said he had been up late the previous night using his cellphone.

While executing a search warrant at the Lyman home, detectives found two .22-caliber shell casings and further evidence of sexual assault near Lyman’s body.

Detectives also found a variety of items in both Lyman’s bedroom and the 15-year-old boy’s room. The items included matching fishnet stockings, one of which was in Lyman’s bedroom and the other in the teen’s bedroom, according to the warrant.

The teen boy’s cluttered bedroom was searched, and officers found two BB gun pistols, plate carriers and magazine pouches, and a handwritten note referencing “several forms of forensic evidence” including “serology,” “DNA” and “firearm testing,” according to the affidavit.

“(A detective) also located a second handwritten note stating, ‘This is a murder story,’” the warrant states.

A doctor at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center told police he also found suspicious evidence on Lyman’s body while she was in the hospital, suggesting possible sexual assault.

Surveillance footage

Footage from two surveillance cameras provided by a neighbor capture a “wide area south and east” and homes across Willowbrook Lane and on Silvercrest Drive, which “eventually intersects” with Willowbrook Lane, where the Lyman home is.

Both of the cameras captured a person “exiting a gap” between two homes on Silvercrest Drive about 2:30 a.m. on March 28. The person then walks short distances both north and south on Silvercrest Drive before turning north onto Willowbrook Lane, “only yards north of the Lyman residence,” police said.

The person then approaches and enters a gap between two homes on Willowbrook Lane walking east. Before walking out of view of the camera, the person pauses and puts “what appears to be a white mask over his face,” according to the affidavit.

One of those homes is part of the same building as the Lyman townhome. East of the townhomes is a gravel path that runs unobstructed the length of and parallel to all the townhomes, including the Lymans’. The Lyman home can be accessed from that path through a gate or over a vinyl fence and through a sliding glass door into the basement, police wrote.

More doorbell camera footage from March 28 shows the person entering the gap between the two Silvercrest Drive homes at 2:30 a.m. then returning to the same gap at 3 a.m.

“Nobody was captured either entering into or exiting from the gap for the rest of the night,” police wrote.

Detectives observed several masks, including a light-colored mask, at the Lyman home, according to the warrant. A second search warrant says police recovered a mask from the teen’s room that is white and brown and “resembles the mask that is seen on the video recordings” provided by neighbors.

The home’s sliding glass basement door was unsecured. “No efforts were made to dust and collect fingerprints from that door,” the affidavit states, without explaining why.

No guns have been found in the investigation, police said.

Investigators received a forensic download of Lyman’s phone and found a conversation between the mother and teen son from July 2024 in which the teenager sent profanity-laden messages calling her names and telling her to leave him alone. Some messages included: “I don’t like you go away,” “Do you need to learn how to shut your mouth,” “I’m more happy when I’m not around you,” “Shut up witch,” “Do you know how insignificant you really are to my life? Very insignificant,” and “I wish I died in your stomach.”

Contributing: Mary Culbertson, Mariah Maynes and Michael Houck, KSL.com