Teen killer Eldon Samuel moved to juvenile prison in Idaho

Eldon Gale Samuel III, the Coeur d’Alene teen convicted of murdering his father and brother, was moved Wednesday to an Idaho juvenile prison to begin serving his sentence of at least 20 years.

Samuel, 16, was transferred from a state maximum security prison in Kuna, Idaho, where he was being held in seclusion temporarily, to one of the state’s three juvenile corrections facilities. Prison officials aren’t disclosing which one. The three juvenile prisons are in St. Anthony, Nampa and Lewiston.

“We are confident this is an appropriate placement and best for him,” said Ashley Dowell, the deputy chief of prisons for the Idaho Department of Corrections.

Samuel will remain in the juvenile facility until he turns 18. He will be able to resume his high school education while there, Dowell said.

Samuel was sentenced April 4 for killing his 13-year-old autistic brother and his abusive father in a bloody attack inside a St. Vincent de Paul housing unit two years ago, when he was 14.

First District Court Judge Benjamin Simpson sentenced him to a minimum of 20 years in prison. The Department of Corrections then will evaluate whether Samuel is a good candidate for parole, or whether his prison term should be extended.

In Samuel’s trial in January, witnesses described a violent, dysfunctional family in which Samuel was the primary caregiver for his brother, Jonathan Samuel, and a father who kept a stash of weapons in the house and trained his sons to prepare for zombie attacks.

Mental health experts testified that Samuel displayed signs of reactive attachment disorder, likely from parental neglect as a small child, and that if he felt cornered or threatened, he could react violently.

A jury convicted Samuel of first-degree murder in the death of his brother and second-degree murder in the death of his father.

Samuel was housed in Kootenai County’s juvenile detention for most of the past two years and had worked on earning high school credits.

During the sentencing, Simpson said he isn’t comfortable with Samuel continuing to be housed with other juvenile offenders. The Department of Corrections, however, informed the judge, the county prosecutor and Samuel’s court-appointed attorney of the decision to place him in the state’s juvenile detention system. None of them objected, Dowell said.