An Abington woman pleaded guilty but mentally ill for killing and dismembering her parents. The plea is a rarity in Montco.

A former Montgomery County special education teacher admitted Monday to killing her parents, more than a year after she was accused of shooting and dismembering them in their Abington home.

Verity Beck, 45, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after entering a negotiated plea of guilty but mentally ill on two counts of first-degree murder.

During a brief hearing, in which Beck appeared in a red prison jumpsuit surrounded by sheriff’s deputies, a Montgomery County judge ruled that Beck will serve two concurrent life sentences.

In January 2023, Beck’s brother arrived at the family home to find that Beck had killed their parents, Reid and Miriam, after the septuagenarians confronted their adult daughter about stealing money from them.

“Things had been bad,” Beck told her brother, according to criminal filings, who called 911 to report the killings.

Police arrived at the home to find the elder Becks in various stages of dismemberment, and found Beck had used a chainsaw to mutilate their bodies after shooting them each in the head.

Beck’s defense attorneys had previously made the case to Common Pleas Judge William R. Carpenter that Beck was legally insane when committing the crimes.

Carpenter rejected that notion on Monday, but agreed with a criminal psychiatrist’s evaluation that Beck was mentally ill. The designation means Beck will receive psychiatric care during her sentence.

Beck stood before a crowded courtroom Monday as her defense attorney read the conditions of the guilty plea to which she had agreed.

When asked whether she understood that by pleading guilty to first-degree murder, she was acknowledging she had the specific intent to kill her victims, Beck responded, “Yes.”

Beck’s plea ended a case that has shocked and fascinated the bedroom Montgomery County community, as intrigue grew around the former teacher at St. Katharine’s School of Special Education who had told police she had been drowning in more than $100,000 in student loan and credit card debt.

Text messages between Beck and her parents revealed that in recent years, the couple had accused their daughter of stealing a $600 rent check from their Sea Isle property. Five days before the murders, police said, Reid Beck had confronted his daughter over Amazon purchases using his bank account, including a $1,007 necklace.

County prosecutors said that they were satisfied with the conclusion of the case, while sheriff’s deputies led Beck out of the courtroom in handcuffs and into an elevator.

She was silent as reporters asked her questions about a possible motive.

“This is a person who is dangerous,” said Assistant District Attorney Samantha Cauffman, a prosecutor in Beck’s case. “She was sane when she killed them, she knew what she did was wrong, and she’s going to pay for it for the rest of her life.”

James P. Lyons, Beck’s attorney, said his client’s mental illness plea means she will be housed in a therapeutic wing of prison, as opposed to a maximum-security designation. He said that Beck was “extremely remorseful,” and called the crimes an “absolute tragedy for everybody.”

A plea of guilty but mentally ill is rare in Montgomery County.

Court officials said they could recall only one other county case that ended with that designation in the last decade, that of Naseema Sami.

In 2021, Sami was found guilty but mentally ill in a case before Carpenter, the judge presiding over Beck’s proceedings. The Folsom native was accused of breaking into a West Norriton home in 2019 and beating two women to death in the throws of a paranoid delusion, nearly two decades after she had once rented a room in the property.