2 sentenced in sleepover murder

Two Australian schoolgirls who garroted a friend as an experiment to see what it was like to kill someone were sentenced to life in prison for a murder a judge called “gruesome and merciless in the extreme.”

The two 17-year-olds, who cannot be named because of their age, stuffed a chemical-soaked cloth into the mouth of Eliza Jane Davis, 15, and throttled her with wire after waking up on a sleepover in Collie, south of Perth, and deciding that neither would feel bad about killing.

The pair buried Davis in a shallow grave under the house and reported her missing, but turned themselves in later.