- Jeffrey Langford seeks parole, recounting his troubled relationship with his mother.
- Langford livestreamed after his mother's shooting, questioning whether to shoot again.
- He pleaded guilty to manslaughter; the parole board will decide on his release.
SALT LAKE CITY — Jeffrey Antonio Langford says while he loved his mother, his relationship with her wasn't healthy.
"Us together, we didn't do so well," he told the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole on Tuesday. "We didn't have a normal mother-son relationship. ... It wasn't the way it should have been."
Their relationship was more like two friends who drank and used drugs together on a daily basis.
"I didn't know what else to do except use. And she was very much the same," he said.
On Oct. 26, 2019, the two got into an argument after binging on alcohol and cocaine, Langford said. His mother, Graciela Laura Holker, 45, threatened to commit suicide and grabbed a gun.
"She did. She absolutely did. She shot herself in the side of the head. Then everything stopped," Langford recalled.
But it was what happened next that resulted in criminal charges and later a conviction.
Langford says he didn't have a cellphone. So he started a livestream video on Facebook, showing images of his mother who had a bullet wound to her head but was still making noises.
"In hindsight it was a horrible idea. I shouldn't have broadcasted that horrible thing," he said.
But in his intoxicated state, Langford said he began questioning in his video, "Do I shoot her again? Do I finish her?"
"And yes, I did shoot her again," he said Tuesday in tears. "It wasn't malicious. It was just sad."
Langford was originally charged with murder, a first-degree felony, and obstructing justice, a second-degree felony. As part of a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter, a second-degree felony, and the obstruction charge was dismissed. He was sentenced to a term of one to 15 years in the Utah State Prison.
On Tuesday, Langford, now 30, of North Salt Lake, went before a member of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole for the first time. He recounted to board member Greg Johnson what was going in his life at that time.
"For many years I was a heavy alcoholic and a drug addict, I would use alcohol and drugs on a daily basis," he said, adding that he and his mother were codependent on each other for drug use, calling it a "normal way of life."
He said things "went downhill" after he was fired from his latest job for drinking at work. Langford said his mother had just gotten out of jail after several months, and "we had just burned through all of our money and were looking at being homeless again."
So they went to the liquor store the morning of Oct. 26, 2019. But as they continued to drink that day, Holker got more depressed and began arguing with her son. Langford said he was angry at his mother for talking about suicide. Langford's father also committed suicide when he was 11.
On Tuesday, Langford said he believes if he had been employed and sober, none of what happened next would have occurred.
"Everyday I wish we had done something different," he said in tears.
Laura Torres, Langford's grandmother and Holker's mother, also addressed the board on Tuesday. She concurred that her daughter was heavily into drugs, and that moving in with Langford after being released from jail should never have happened.
"She was toxic to him," Torres said, while adding that she loved her daughter, but "they didn't have a mother-son relationship, it was buddies."
Johnson noted that Langford has had several successes while in prison. His sentencing guidelines, which were created by state lawmakers but are not binding, call for Langford to remain incarcerated until at least 2028. Johnson says it was also recommended that Langford complete a residential drug treatment program before being released. Langford says he also recently was prescribed medication for borderline personality disorder.
The full five-member board will now vote whether to grant parole or to set another hearing to make sure he has been following his treatment program before setting a release date.
"I will do anything I can to better myself," he told Johnson. "I am changing and trying every day, and I feel remorse for what I did every day. ... It'll never leave me. I'm just trying to start new."
