Categories: Palm Bay

Grand Jury Indicts Palm Bay Woman for Killing her Mother

MELBOURNE, Florida – A Brevard County Grand Jury issued a First-degree Premeditated Murder indictment against 57-year-old Lisa Gaye Leikvold for allegedly killing her own mother, Laverne Hoffman, with a large kitchen knife at her mother’s residence on Harbor View Drive in Melbourne, Florida.

The Grand Jury was presented with three witnesses by Assistant State Attorney Michael Hunt: the Brevard County Medical Examiner, a Melbourne Police Department Crime Scene Investigator, and a Melbourne Police Department Detective.

According to Melbourne police, Ms. Huffman was found lying on her back in her bedroom with a large kitchen knife in her chest. The suspect, Ms. Leikvold, was found on an adjacent couch inside the house when officers arrived. Police say that Ms. Leikvold did not resist and cooperated with the officers.

The initial investigation is pointing to ongoing family strife as the motivation behind the matricide, according to investigators.

While domestic violence offenses continue a decade-long decline as Florida’s population ages, the relationships of the victim and offender have changed dramatically over the last four years. According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Annual Uniform Crime Report, spouse-on-spouse murders have dropped from 66 in 2011 to 46 in 2014, while parents murdering children have doubled from 19 to 38 during the same time period. The largest change was in the number of “other family” victim/offender murders which has nearly quadrupled from 7 in 2011 to 27 in 2014.