The final chapter of Tramelle Sturgis' murder is over. A judge sentenced his grandmother, Dellia Castile, to 50 years in prison Thursday. But for detectives who handled the case and saw the horror first hand, the details are still haunting.



"It's really hard to let go," said St. Joseph County Metro Homicide Detective Jim Taylor.

He still struggles with it.

"You walk into this house and the main floor, it was immaculate. It looked like a museum," Taylor recalled. "And we were like, 'This is different than normal -- a crime scene -- not what you would expect." And then we hit the basement and it's like oh my God, really? There was blood everywhere."

Metro Homicide released several crime scene photographs to WSBT of that basement on West Washington Street in South Bend. The photos, posted below, show a mop and bucket Tramelle's older brother used to try and clean up the blood the night 10-year-old Tramelle died, the wood dowel rod Terry Sturgis used to beat his children and the coal chute where the three brothers shared a bed.

The worst for Detective Taylor?

The photographs of Tramelle's body.

"It just wanted to make you throw up. It was probably the most horrific thing I had ever seen in my life," he said. "But like any other case, we get to work. You have to put emotion aside and it's hard."



Listening to the stories from Tramelle's 8 and 14-year-old brothers was actually the toughest part for Taylor.

"I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I really couldn't. I took a break and just went out and sat in my car and sat there and cried. I couldn't even drive home because I wasn't, I don't want to say capable, but I didn't even have it in me to drive at that point because of what I was listening to," he said.

The important thing to point out, he said, is that his and his partner Detective Galen Pelletier worked the case alongside everyone else in the Metro Homicide Unit. Some have been affected by it more than others.

Taylor stressed that Sturgis and Castile were convicted and essentially sentenced to life in prison because of the teamwork between detectives, prosecutors and others involved in the case.

Taylor has a 6-year-old son and what still baffles him and probably always will is how could this have happened?

"Every one of us back here [in Metro Homicide] is a parent and it's just, it's gut wrenching to know that somebody could do this to a child and somebody could cover this up because that was their child that did it," he said of Sturgis and Castile. "I just can't comprehend that."