For years, Jeff Sharp often relied on the same refrain when he encountered an addict. Usually it involved an expletive and a blunt question: Why do you keep doing it?
At the time, more than two decades ago, Sharp — a detective with the Seattle Police Department’s gang unit — was patrolling high-drug areas on a bicycle. He then served in an anti-crime unit that focused on narcotics and apprehension of fugitives.
“It was constant contact with people who were using drugs,” Sharp, 53, recalls.
For more on the case, watch Wrong Turns tonight on “Dateline” at 9 ET/8 CT.
But what happened to his daughter Bailey changed the way he thinks about addiction — and led to a pair of murders the veteran law enforcement officer could never have imagined. About 1,000 miles from where she grew up, Bailey Sharp took part in a murder plot fueled by what a Southern California prosecutor described as “jealousy, greed, anger and addiction.”
Three weeks after the brutal 2016 murder of 25-year-old Justin Hilbert — who was repeatedly stabbed and shot in the head — Bailey suffered a similar fate, Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Amy Zois told a jury earlier this year.
Bailey, 23, was stabbed more than 20 times in broad daylight near a park in Riverside, the city of more than 300,000 in California’s Inland Empire, Zois said.
On April 16, former Navy sailor Jared Bischoff, 34, was convicted of murder and attempted kidnapping in Bailey’s death. Bischoff and a second defendant, Danny Serrano, 32, were also convicted of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in Hilbert’s death.
In June, both men were sentenced to life in prison.
The only reason Bailey wasn’t charged with Hilbert’s murder, Zois told “Dateline,” is because she’s dead.
Even though Jeff’s views on addiction took a dramatic turn before 2016 and he gained a better understanding of how the disorder hijacks the brain, the reality exposed by the prosecution left him and his wife struggling to understand how their daughter could have done anything. doing so went “against everything we knew she was,” said Ericka Sharp, Bailey’s mother.
The couple is speaking out for the first time in an effort to avoid the shame and stigma that Ericka says is often felt by families struggling with addiction and mental health issues.
“It’s not something people want to talk about,” says Ericka (53). “How much money you had, how you were raised, where you were raised – sometimes none of that matters.”
A spiraling drug problem
The oldest of three children, Bailey grew up in a small town northeast of Seattle. Her mother, a managing partner with a real estate firm, described her daughter as an easy-going child who grew into an empathetic teenager. She loved soccer and expressed an interest in becoming a counselor.
Bailey also struggled with a range of health issues — including fibromyalgia, lupus, depression and anxiety, Ericka said. After chronic pain forced her to quit football her sophomore year of high school, she turned to marijuana, painkillers and alcohol, her mother said.
Eventually, Bailey tried heroin, Ericka said, “and it just went from there.”
There were overdoses, hospital visits, stays at a rehabilitation center in California and a move to Texas, where Bailey lived with Ericka’s parents in an attempt to keep her away from the drug connections she had built up.
Jeff said that during Bailey’s stay in a Palm Springs rehab center 10 years ago, his view of addiction was shattered. A class there offered a simple yet profound lesson that he described as a “sacred moment.”
“Once he gets his claws around you, it’s not a choice anymore,” Jeff recalled. “Your brain tells you that you are going to do whatever it takes to achieve this.”
Jeff realized he had been completely wrong, he said. He stopped asking the question, “Why do you keep doing it?” — because he already knew the answer, he said.
“I was told what was really going on,” he said.
Now he added: “I don’t ask demeaning questions to someone who can’t solve what’s going on.”
At one point, while visiting her parents, Jeff and Bailey had a conversation about their divergent paths. As he sat on the family’s couch, Ericka said, Bailey described the life of an addict: getting drugs, using drugs, staying in drug houses. Meanwhile, Jeff was talking about raiding drug houses and arresting dealers.
“It was a very surreal moment to see this match go back and forth between the two of them,” Ericka said.
A $100,000 conspiracy
Bailey seemed to get better in Texas, her parents said. But in 2016, she moved to California and started dating Bischoff. Her parents said they were initially optimistic about the stability a military spouse could provide.
Ericka still spoke to Bailey often, she said, reminding her to go to the emergency room if a problem arose and that she had options available to her.
“You’re helping them navigate back,” she said. “That’s all you can do.”
But on July 12 of that year, Jeff said, the couple learned their daughter was dead. She had not died of an overdose or succumbed to health problems – a reality her parents feared. Bailey had been murdered, the district attorney’s office told them. But it was years before they learned the grim details of their daughter’s involvement in Hilbert’s murder, they said.
As Zois, the prosecutor, explained at trial, in the summer of 2016, Bischoff was furious that his wife had left him and reunited with Hilbert, her high school sweetheart. The couple had a young child, and Bailey — consumed by her heroin addiction and selling drugs herself at the time — agreed to help Bischoff kill his ex and her new family, Zois said.
Bischoff was motivated by jealousy and anger, Zois said. But the sailor promised Bailey a share of a payout on the military life insurance policy he took out for his ex, Tonya Reppe, the prosecutor said. Although the former couple was in the process of divorcing, Zois said, that process had not yet been completed.
The policy — worth $100,000 — would be split between Bischoff, Bailey and Serrano, whom they recruited to help carry out the plot, Zois said.
A friend of Bailey’s who worked at a hookah bar where the trio hung out later testified that he heard Bischoff and Bailey discussing the plan, an account supported by cell phone location data, according to Sgt. Lance Stoyer of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office.
Bailey later admitted to the friend what they had done, Zois said.
An attorney for Bischoff disputed this story, telling “Dateline” that his client had nothing to do with Hilbert’s murder. Bailey developed and implemented the plan himself, he said.
During the trial, a lawyer for Serrano denied that his client was part of the conspiracy and said he had no motive to kill Hilbert.
Two gruesome deaths
On June 17, 2016, Bailey sent Reppe a friend request on Facebook, Stoyer said. She then sent Reppe a message stating that Hilbert — who also struggled with addiction — was using and cheating on her again, according to screenshots of messages reviewed by “Dateline.”
When she confronted Hilbert about the message on June 20, he denied relapse and cheating, but said he had recently met Bailey and she had offered to involve him in a drug deal, Reppe recalled.
Reppe begged Hilbert not to take the offer, she said, and what started as an argument ended up apparently resolved.
“We’ll figure out another way,” she remembered telling him. ‘Put a pin in this. Don’t do anything.”
Hilbert, who did not live with Reppe, then left for the night, she said. That was the last time she saw him.
Hilbert was “taken,” tortured and fatally shot, Zois said. Although no murder weapon was found, investigators believe he was killed with a shotgun that belonged to Bischoff, Stoyer said.
Early the next morning, a motorcyclist discovered Hilbert’s body near a reservoir south of Riverside.
The Facebook messages show that after Hilbert left Reppe’s house, Bailey asked Reppe to meet her outside. But Reppe, who was at her mother’s home with her child, declined Bailey’s offer, she told “Dateline.”
That failure meant there was no insurance payout, Zois said. And without that money, the deal between Bischoff, Bailey and Serrano fell apart in the weeks that followed. Bailey began to distance herself from Bischoff, fearing for her safety, Zois said.
On July 10, Bailey met Bischoff near a park in Riverside. Witnesses, including Bailey’s friend from the hookah bar, whom she had asked to come along, saw what happened next, Zois said: Bischoff put Bailey in a chokehold and tried to drag her into the car. He then began stabbing her, the prosecutor said.
The friend, Ricky, still fears for his safety, so NBC News identifies him by his first name only. Ricky had kept his distance at Bailey’s request, but he said he ran to the scene when he saw what was happening, according to an interview he gave to investigators.
However, Ricky was too late to intervene. According to the interview, he told authorities he saw Bischoff’s bloodied face as the sailor got into his car and drove away.
“He had the look of a scared person in his eyes,” he told investigators.
In an interview with “Dateline,” Zois said Bischoff was losing control of Bailey and likely thought she would reveal the conspiracy.
Bischoff’s attorney told “Dateline” that his client stabbed Bailey in self-defense after she grabbed his knife.
A resolution years later
After years of delays due to Covid and other issues, the Sharps attended a part of Bischoff’s trial this year for their daughter’s sake that was complicated.
“To me, it wasn’t like she wasn’t a victim,” Jeff said. “But she was less of a victim. That sounds awful coming from me.”
Believing that the part of the trial that focused on Hilbert’s murder was not for them to attend, Jeff said, they stayed only for the proceedings devoted to Bailey’s murder. At one point, they said, they briefly spoke with Hilbert’s parents, Cathy and Steve Hudson, and told them an apology wasn’t enough.
Cathy told “Dateline” that she understood Bailey played a role in her son’s murder. But she also felt sorry for the woman, she said.
“She didn’t deserve that either,” she said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
