Six children—Brian Anthony Nelson II (a 13-year-old boy b. 2009), Brantley Nelson (a 9-year-old girl b. 2013), Vegeta Nelson (a 7-year-old boy b. 2015), Ragnar Nelson (a 5-year-old boy b. 2017), Kurgan Nelson (a 2-year-old boy b. 2020), and Britannica Nelson (a 1-year-old girl b. 2021)—died as part of a murder-suicide plot conceived by one or both of their parents, Brian and Brittney Nelson. The children were homeschooled.
Brittney Nelson was raised by “mean” relatives after her single mother died young. Brian Sr. and Brittney went to high school together and married in November 2008 when she was 18 and he was 20. Their first child, Brian II, was born in March 2009 shortly after their marriage. In his early 20s Brian Sr. experienced a serious head injury at work which left him permanently disabled. While the Nelsons sent Brian II to school for kindergarten, they pulled him out of school to homeschool him in the middle of first grade because “his father didn’t get along with what they were teaching… [The school] wanted boys to dance like girls. That was the final thing.” After that, all subsequent children were homeschooled by Brittney, who did not work outside the home and also had debilitating medical issues. Brian II enjoyed playing with his younger siblings; Brantley was the “artist in the family”; Vegeta, called “Vegeta the Prince”, was mechanically inclined and loved to watch repair videos; Ragnar was the “rough-and-tumble one of the bunch”. Neighbors reported that they had no idea six children were living in the home. By December 2020, the unemployed Nelsons were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and declared bankruptcy. The children’s paternal grandparents, Danny and Marilyn Nelson, helped as much as they could by offering babysitting and financial assistance, but the Nelsons began to distance themselves more over time.
In October 2022, the Nelsons were relying on government assistance for food, rent, and utilities. They arranged to have the children’s grandparents babysit during a planned medical appointment for Brittney. The Nelsons called their landlord and asked to have the gas line turned off. Two days later, rather than taking the children to their grandparents’ house, one or both Nelsons gathered the children in a room at the back of the house and killed them, then set the room on fire. The adults then came to the front of the house and died by violence. Numerous firearms were recovered from the home. The murders came to light when neighbors noticed the fire and tried to pull the adult Nelsons out of the house, but they were beyond help. When the authorities arrived, they determined that none of the family members were killed by the fire.
Date: October 27, 2022
Location: Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
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