
Ashley Toye: Monster or Mistake?
Brutal Murders
On October 7, 2006, 18-year-old Alexis “Alex” Sosa and his 14-year-old nephew, Jeffrey Sosa, were beaten and tortured for more than two-and-a-half hours before being shot to death; their bodies later set ablaze in a burning car. Investigators charged 10 people — mostly teenagers — in the murders, including Ashley Toye, the then 17-year-old pregnant girlfriend of the accused ringleader, Kemar Johnston. Seven of the ten suspects took plea deals, but Ashley refused and was the first of three to go to trial. “I didn’t take the plea offer because I felt like 25 to 35 years was a very long time,” Ashley says. “My attorney felt like I would get off. He knew I didn’t commit murder.” She adds that her attorney also hoped the jury would be sympathetic because she was pregnant at the time. “I thought I was guilty of aggravated battery,” she continues. “I didn’t feel like I was guilty of anything else, because I didn’t do anything else.”
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Ashley was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Then, in June 2012, the United States Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to sentence juveniles to life in prison without parole for murder without first having a sentencing hearing that takes into consideration their age and development. This ruling may give Ashley the opportunity for a reviewed — and possibly reduced — sentence. Ashley says she feels she deserves this chance at freedom. “The murder would have happened with me there or not,” she claims. “I made a huge mistake. I never thought a jury would convict me because I knew deep down in my heart that I was innocent of the murders.”
A Troubled Childhood
Ashley’s father, Cliff, says he raised his three children as a single parent, without support from his ex-wife, Julie.“Cliff and I went through a very tough divorce,” Julie explains. She says that between 6 and 12 years old, the children were shuffled back and forth between her and Cliff. She adds that at around 12 or 13 years old, Ashley and Bethany started getting into trouble and were caught stealing makeup, skipping school and smoking marijuana. “At that time, Clifford dropped the girls off with me and said, ‘Take them.’ He couldn’t handle them anymore,” she says. After living with their mom for two years, Julie admits that she needed to get help for a drug problem and left the girls a note while they were at school, explaining that she could no longer take care of them and that they were to go back with their father. “And I left,” Julie admits. “I thought they were going to be taken care of.”
“I don’t know if [Ashley’s] mother abandoning her had any effect on my daughter,” Cliff says. He says knowing that he may never see his daughter outside of prison again is “more than someone can handle.”
The Victims’ Family
Jeffrey Sosa’s sister, Linda, explains that she was invited to the party but made a last-minute decision to go elsewhere. “That night, at around 12:30 or 1:00 a.m., my brother had called my phone, and I ignored his phone call,” she says, while choking back tears. “Now I know what he was calling for. For a long time, I lived with that feeling that I could have done something to help them.”“They just didn’t kill them; they tortured them,” says Alfredo, Jeffrey’s father and Alex’s brother.
“What really shocked me is that there were women involved in [the murders] as well,” Linda says. “How could a girl do this to a kid as he’s begging for his life, with tears in his eyes and just keep doing it and sitting there, laughing in their faces?” She says she believes Ashley could have stopped the night’s events at any time.
“[Ashley] is trying to play this victim role, when in reality, we are the victims,” Alfredo says. “She’s pretty much a cold-hearted murderer. She should be right where she is.”
“The just thing to do here is to keep [Ashley] in prison, where she’s of no harm to anyone else, even her own child,” Linda adds. “She should just rot in prison.”


“I think that Ashley should have a hearing, and I think teens should get this hearing,” Dr. Phil says. He adds that having a hearing doesn’t mean that the teens shouldn’t be held accountable for their actions.

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