A Lansdale woman helped her boyfriend hide after a murder and lied to a grand jury. Now, she’s heading to jail.
Hailey Covelens told a grand jury she didn't know where Cody Reed was, when, in reality, she was funding his time on the lam after killing a man on Schuylkill River Trail.
A Lansdale woman who prosecutors say engaged in a “full cover-up” of her boyfriend’s role in a murder, lying to a grand jury about his whereabouts while funding his flight from justice, was sentenced Wednesday to 9 to 23 months in the Montgomery County jail.
Hailey Covelens, 21, pleaded guilty to perjury and hindering apprehension in August, two months after her longtime beau, Cody Reed, was convicted of first-degree murder for luring Daquan Tucker to a secluded section of the Schuylkill River Trail in Norristown and killing him.
Reed and his accomplice, Marquise Johnson, both 24, are serving life sentences in state prison.
Their arrests for Tucker’s March 2023 murder were made more difficult by Covelens’ lies, according to Assistant District Attorney Kathleen McLaughlin. Covelens kept in close contact with Reed during the month he and Johnson were on the lam, and sent them money for food and Airbnb rentals, spending more than $1,000 from her salary at Wawa.
On the night of the murder, an Uber account registered to Covelens ordered the car that took Tucker, 25, to the apartment in Norristown that she shared with Reed, delivering him to a violent end at her boyfriend’s hands.
“This was not a momentary lapse in judgment,” McLaughlin said. “This was a series of fully formed, conscious decisions on the defendant’s part.”
Johnson’s girlfriend, Brianna Radley, 22, had been sentenced to the same prison term as Covelens in October. Radley drove Reed and Johnson to Philadelphia, where she and Johnson lived, after the murder. Then she, like Covelens, helped the pair pay for Airbnb stays throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
In court Wednesday before Montgomery County Court Judge Thomas Branca, Covelens insisted that she was a changed person.
Her voice thick with emotion, she apologized for lying to the grand jury by denying that she knew Reed’s whereabouts while police sought to arrest him. She said she had worked hard to turn her life around, moving away from Norristown and the people she associated with there. She keeps busy, she said, working at a luxury hotel and in a clothing store at the King of Prussia Mall.
“I’m taking steps in my life to uphold my own wellness, instead of focusing on toxic relationships,” she said.
Her attorney, Keith Harbison, said Covelens had made a poor decision, caught up in misplaced allegiance to an ex.
“She’s able to do this, able to stay out of trouble,” Harbison said. “She’s got problems, but she’s young, and she’s seen the error of her ways.”
He asked Branca to sentence Covelens to probation, saying jail time would cost her her jobs and impede the progress she has made in her life.
But Branca, the judge who oversees grand juries in Montgomery County, sharply disagreed with Harbison’s assessment.
“She was young, I agree, but youth cannot excuse her conduct in this case. It just can’t,” he said. “I’d like to send the message that people who lie to a grand jury, who help hide a murderer, need to be taken to task.”
McLaughlin, the prosecutor, said she doubted Covelens’ remorse. She said Covelens still keeps in contact with Reed, despite her assertions to the contrary.
Additionally, McLaughlin said, Covelens’ history of lying to Reed began before the murder. In 2021, she purchased a handgun, lying on the paperwork that the firearm was for her. In reality, investigators said, the gun was for Reed, who was unable to buy one himself because of a felony conviction.
For that straw purchase, Covelens served 11½ months in the county jail, during which she was included in three-way phone calls with Reed, who was in custody at the time in connection with Tucker’s murder, according to McLaughlin.
Covelens will report to the county jail in Eagleville on Monday to begin serving her sentence.