Teens in love carried out gruesome plan that left mom, brother dead in fiery blaze, DA says
A few hours before daybreak on the last Thursday morning in February, a red-brick house caught fire in the rolling farmland that spreads out below Yellow Creek half a dozen or so miles southwest of Forsyth.
The blaze gutted the three-bedroom house. Flames devoured most of its roof, and choking smoke killed a woman and her 21-year-old son who were believed to have been asleep inside.
As the day wore on after the Feb. 27 fire, the authorities came to suspect foul play.
The dead woman’s 2007 Chevrolet Malibu was missing.
So was her 16-year-old daughter.
A nationwide lookout was posted for the silver car.
That afternoon, some 400 miles away in western Kentucky, the teenage daughter, Candace Walton, was stopped by the police. She was later extradited from Kentucky and charged with two felony counts of murder. Teenagers in Georgia charged with murder are automatically tried as adults.
In the weeks that followed, details of an alleged murder scheme began unfolding: one that officials believe is linked to a teenage romance gone haywire, and one that Candace Walton’s surviving brother suggests may involve “devilish things.”
‘A methodical plan’
Since Candace Walton’s arrest, investigators have said that when she was pulled over in Kentucky at the wheel of her mother’s car she had with her about $2,000 from a tax refund check that her mother, Tasha Vandiver, had cashed.
Autopsies on the remains of Vandiver, 46, and her son, Gerald Walton, revealed they died of smoke inhalation. Within days, Candace Walton was brought back to Georgia to face murder and arson charges.
Officials said she had been headed west to Oregon to see her boyfriend, who a month before had moved there with his mother. The pair had met while both were students at Mary Persons High School in Monroe County.
Two-and-a-half months after the fatal fire, in mid-May, investigators would also charge the boyfriend, Kaleo Pangelinan, with two counts of murder in connection with the deaths.
Pangelinan, 17, of Roseburg, Oregon, has been jailed there since, awaiting extradition.
Pangelinan has been linked to an alleged “methodical plan” to kill Candace Walton’s mother and brother through messages the young couple sent on “a social media platform,” Monroe District Attorney Jonathan Adams recently told The Telegraph.
“They basically had a conversation,” Adams said, which included “ways to kill” Vandiver and Gerald Walton.
Adams did not elaborate.
But Candace Walton’s half-brother, Eric Walton, in an interview with The Telegraph, said investigators are aware of 62 pages of Instagram messages in which she and Pangelinan had for more than a month discussed an alleged murder plot — one ending with the teen paramours back together.
“Apparently,” Eric Walton said, “love does some crazy things these days.”
‘They fell in love’
Eric Walton, who is 24, works as a welder in Jackson, just up the road from Forsyth.
He said his sister and Pangelinan began dating sometime last year after Pangelinan moved to the area with his mother from their native Oregon.
Eric didn’t live with his mother and siblings at their out-in-the-country house along Old Zebulon Road between Forsyth and Culloden. On occasions Eric visited, Pangelinan would be there.
Eric said that before meeting Pangelinan he had checked out Pangelinan’s now-deleted Instagram account in which Eric said Pangelinan dubbed himself “Satan’s left hand.”
Eric Walton told The Telegraph that Pangelinan “believed there was a demon of sorts, and he believed that he was his left hand, like he was supposed to do devilish things. ... I asked him about it and he just, that’s his reply, that he believes in the devil a good deal and he’s not for the God side of things.”
When Pangelinan moved back to Oregon in January, Eric Walton said Pangelinan still wanted to see his sister, “And mom put a stop to it.”
Eric also described in detail a threatening text message that he said Pangelinan sent to his mother, Tasha Vandiver, after moving away.
The district attorney would not confirm the existence of such a message, but Eric said he believes Pangelinan put his sister up to setting the fire and possibly “got in her head.”
Eric said he thinks the fatal fire began in the family’s living room and may have been set using notebook paper. He also expressed disdain at the idea that Candace would only serve life in prison, if convicted, adding “That ain’t the way it should be.”
‘No hand in it’
Pangelinan’s court-appointed attorney who will represent him in the murder case upon his likely return to Georgia said the Oregon teen “had no hand in it whatsoever.”
The lawyer, Bradley David Moody, of Stockbridge, said, “This is one of those cases where I read (the charges) and said, ‘You got to be kidding.’”
Moody said Pangelinan was not in Georgia at the time of the killings and that cellphone text messages between his client and Candace Walton “paint a picture (Pangelinan) didn’t do this.”
Prosecutors, however, have not yet shared with the defense — nor are they required to for now — evidence they may have regarding social-media messages the couple might have exchanged.
Another lawyer for Pangelinan, David G. Terry, of Oregon, who is handling his extradition case, said his client has cooperated with the investigation and been interviewed by detectives.
Terry said text messages Pangelinan and Candace Walton sent one another had been made available to the police.
“I’ve read and re-read and re-read those texts,” Terry said. “And while they’re predictably maudlin and syrupy romantic as a 17- and 16-year-old might share, there’s nothing in my opinion that rises to the level of aiding and abetting her.”
Terry added that “my client, frankly, had no belief that she would ever do anything like any of this,” nor did Pangelinan believe Candace Walton “would actually come out to Oregon and live happily ever after.”
This story was originally published June 13, 2020 at 7:00 AM.