VCSO: Teenager Murders Mom, Gets Friends To Stage Burglary

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DeBary, FL - A teenage boy and two of his friends are now in custody after he admits to strangling his mother to death in a fit of rage and then trying to conceal the crime by burying her body under a fire pit at a church nearby. 15-year-old Gregory L. Ramos also confessed to staging a burglary at his family's home on Alicante Road in DeBary with the help of those friends as a way to hide the murder of his 46-year-old mother, according to the Volusia County Sheriff's Office. Gail Cleavenger died early Friday morning (November 2nd) after her son went into her bedroom following an argument between them around 90 minutes earlier over bad grades at school, according to Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood.
VCSO was initially called to the family home just before 4 p.m. yesterday for a reported burglary, with Ramos telling deputies he found his home "ransacked", with a door kicked in and his mother's van in the driveway with the engine running, per Chitwood. "As the investigation began, it became quite apparent that this was not an act of random violence," Chitwood noted. "At 12:30 [a.m.], he went into her room and woke her up and began strangling her and strangled her until he killed her." Ramos initially claimed his mother was missing during a call to 911 after he had gotten home from school, per Chitwood. "[Ramos] left school early, which is where his story began to fall apart," Chitwood stated. "[He] then got home and made, in his own words, a Grammy-winning phone call to 911 to talk about this horrible incident that did not really occur." Detectives say he gave a "full and detailed confession" to the murder as the investigation progressed, implicating 17-year-olds Dylan Ceglarek and Brian Porras along the way. "Detectives located Cleavenger’s body in her burial site at River City Church in the early morning hours [today]," said VCSO spokesperson Andrew Gant. "Elsewhere in DeBary, deputies recovered the dumped property that was removed from the home in the staged burglary." Among those items were computers, a Playstation 4 and a rifle, according to VCSO. Deputies also took custody of the shovel and broom used to bury Cleavenger and straighten up the scene around the fire pit. Investigators think Ramos used a wheelbarrow to load his mother's body into her van and drove it into Daytona Beach and Holly Hill before deciding to bury it at the church on East Highbanks Road, which is close to his home. Ceglarek and Porras are facing "multiple" criminal charges, per detectives, but the exact charges haven't been released at this time for them or for Ramos. All three of the teenagers involved are students at University High School in Orange City who are "close-knit" friends, according to Chitwood. They're now in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice. Ramos' father was away on a business trip to Seattle at the time of the murder but had spoken to his wife on the phone about their son's school performance issues just before she was murdered, per Chitwood.

Gail Cleavenger

Dylan Ceglarek

Brian Porras

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