CALIFORNIA — Michelle Curran was a high school sophomore when she vanished from her Las Vegas area neighborhood on April 4, 2001. Later that same month, a horrific discovery was made at a Riverside County property.
The 16-year-old’s tied-up nude body was found inside a horse trailer parked on a remote ranch in the Ribidoux area. The teen had been shot in the head and there was evidence of rape and torture at the property, investigators said.
Within days of finding the teen, Michael Forrest Thornton, 45, and Janeen Marie Snyder, 21, both of Rialto, were charged with first-degree murder with special circumstances in the brutal slaying.
Separate juries convicted the pair of murder and determined the couple was eligible for the death penalty for kidnapping and torture.
On Tuesday, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced Thornton was dead at age 68.
“At 8:35 p.m. [Monday], Thornton was pronounced deceased by a registered nurse in the hospice unit who determined the initial cause of death to be natural,” CDCR announced.
Records show Thornton died at the prison system’s California Medical Facility in Vacaville.
A quiet death — unlike his victim’s.
Thornton and Snyder held Curran captive for 14 days, giving her drugs, intimidating her with firearms and sexually exploiting her, Judge Paul Zellerbach said during sentencing.
Curran’s death marked one in what authorities believed to be a long string of attacks on young girls. Zellerbach said Thornton used Snyder to lure teens to him so he could participate in sexual sadism.
Snyder met Thornton, the owner of a chain of Southern California hair salons, as a runaway when she was 13 or 14 years old and he was in his 30s, Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Mike Rushton said at the time of the trials.
“She eventually became his lover,” he said.
Snyder had been working as a part-time stripper in the Las Vegas area at the time of Curran’s disappearance, according to media reports.
Investigators found Curran was taken from her hometown to California by the killers. Her last moments were especially brutal, according to media reports. She was tied to rafters by her hands and feet and violated.
“It was Miss Snyder who ultimately approached Miss Curran in this very vulnerable position, put the gun to her forehead and pulled the trigger,” Zellerbach said.
Snyder, now 45, is housed at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. She is ineligible for parole due to her condemned sentence.
Loved ones tearfully testified Curran was killed before she got her driver’s license, before she ever attended a prom, before she graduated from high school. The Dalmation-loving teen was the would-be maid of honor at her only sister’s wedding. A young life cut short at the hands of two people who outlived her by decades.
