Man pleads guilty to murdering 16-year-old girlfriend

BAYTOWN, Texas (FOX 26) - A man charged with killing his 16-year-old girlfriend is now pleading guilty to her murder. 

In 2016, the girl’s mom and little sister were found dead inside their Baytown home before the 16-year-old’s body was discovered in the woods in Texas City.  

Jesse Dobbs, 21, has been locked up in Galveston County for nearly two years saying he didn’t kill his 16-year-old girlfriend.  Now, he’s admitting he did. Baytown police believe Dobbs also murdered the teen's mother and little sister.

It had only been a few weeks since Kirsten Fritch, 16, met Jesse Dobbs, 21, online.  He began staying with the teen, her mother and sister, and soon their Baytown home became a crime scene. It was cordoned by crime scene tape after investigators found Fritch’s mom Cynthia Morris, 37, and her sister Breanna Pavlicek, 13, shot to death inside.

Dobbs and Fritch were missing.  There’s surveillance video of cops catching Dobbs that night in a Texas City bar and his girlfriend's mom’s missing car was parked across the street.  Two days later, Dobbs' 16-year-old girlfriend was found stabbed to death in the woods behind the bar where he was arrested.  That was November 2016.  Now, Dobbs is pleading guilty to stabbing his 16-year-old girlfriend more than 50 times, but why did he do it?

"He’s the only one who can tell us 100 percent and honestly why he did what he did, but at this point he just hasn’t,” says Baytown Police Lt. Steve Dorris. 

Although Dobbs is only pleading guilty to one murder, Baytown police believe he also killed his girlfriend’s mother and sister.

“We want to make sure when we do charge somebody with that kind of crime, not just that we have enough to put them in the county jail, we want to make sure we have enough evidence to send them to prison,” says Lt. Dorris.

Dobbs' attorney says she hopes to lessen his punishment by arguing this is a case of sudden passion.

"We don’t believe something just triggered him in the heat of the moment.  Let’s put it this way, there’s a total of four people in this entire picture and only one is still alive,” says Lt. Dorris.

Dobbs’ trial was set to begin September 24, 2018.  Now that he is pleading guilty to killing Fritch, the punishment phase of the trial will begin on September 24 instead.  He could spend from 5 to 99 years in prison for First Degree Murder, or only 2 to 20 years behind bars if the jury finds this is a case of sudden passion.