From Minister To Murderer: Ohio Father Terrorized His Children, Forced Them To Kill

An ordained minister in Ohio wreaked havoc on the lives of his 12 children by brainwashing them into believing he was a God and eventually forcing his son and daughter to commit murder.

“There’s no explaining how much hate I’ve got for that man,” Charles Sexton said of his father, Eddie Lee Sexton.

While Charles noted everybody “adored” and “loved” the seemingly polite and religious Eddie, behind closed doors he made his family’s life hell.

According to Charles, his father’s manipulation stretched back to when he was a young boy. One evening, he and his brother woke up and saw a beast tapping on their window. By the time the terrified children alerted their mother, the creature was gone. Eddie had dressed up in disguise and claimed the boys had seen Satan. He told them, however, if they followed absolutely everything he told them to do then the devil would never hurt them.

“My father, he dabbled in cults… He was his own church,” Charles said, sharing how one day “my father told us, all of his kids, that he was the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning and the end.”

“Things started getting crazy in the house” as the situation with his father devolved over time, Charles said.

On another occasion, Charles recalled that his father slit their cat Misty’s throat in front of his family during a bizarre ceremony, drained the pet’s blood into a chalice, and then forced everyone to drink it. “He told us never talk about it, never speak of it,” Charles said.

Eddie simultaneously became more and more obsessed with keeping private what was happening in the Sexton home — physical and sexual abuse of his children, which included a “marriage ceremony” he performed to wed his own 17-year-old daughter, Pixie, in front of his shocked family.

“My mom was beside herself when they did that,” Charles said of Estella Sexton. “She couldn’t look at none of us. She just kept looking at the carpet. She really couldn’t step in. If she stepped in, she’d just get beat. She was a victim as much as we [were].”

Eddie then entered into “marriages” with at least two more of his own daughters, and he fathered multiple children with Pixie while she was in high school.

Charles said Pixie was pregnant with her father’s third child when she met a “real good guy” named Joel Good at her high school, and the two began dating.

Despite Eddie’s strict rules about having no contact with any outsiders, he appeared okay with the relationship. “I think Joel was another scheme to cover up my dad having another child with my sister, Pixie,” Charles speculated.

The unhinged Eddie next began training his children how to fight and kill in a war he believed they would eventually wage against the cops over their land and family.

That day came when Charles’ younger sister, Michelle, spoke with social services at her school and authorities launched an investigation. Although Eddie was subsequently forbidden from going to his home, one day he showed up and barricaded himself and his family inside before he armed them and called police.

The two-day standoff ended after a deputy convinced Eddie to surrender, but he bonded out of jail and the Sextons — including Pixie’s boyfriend Joel and her new baby, Skipper — fled to a campground in Florida.

One day, Pixie’s son became fussy. “The baby was crying and irritated my dad,” Charles said. “He told Pixie, ‘Shut the baby up or I’m gonna come back there and shut it up.’ She put her hand over Skipper’s mouth, and Skipper shut up.”

Eddie ordered Charles and his brother, Willie, to bury the dead baby. “This child was real innocent,” Charles said. “He was brought into just a crazy, evil family.”

Joel, who still believed Skipper was his son, began arguing with Eddie, forcing the disgraced minister to come up with a new scheme to cover up the infant’s death: He would kidnap his son Eddie Sexton Jr.’s boy in Ohio, where he moved years earlier to get away from his father to start a family of his own.

“My father told me to knock on the door, that he’s going to answer it and you’re going to shoot him and you’re going to take his baby, his youngest son,” Charles said, noting that if his brother had actually come to the door, he would have killed him. “That’s how much control [my father] had on his boys. Whatever he said, we’d do. I don’t care what it was.”

After returning to Florida from the failed mission in Ohio, Eddie turned his sights on Joel, fearing he would turn him in to authorities. Eddie reportedly held a gun to his son Willie’s head and forced him to strangle Joel with a noose or be killed himself.

Law enforcement hunting for the Sexton family located them a short time later and placed both Estella and Eddie under arrest for kidnapping, child abuse, child endangerment, and multiple other charges.

Charles said he then gathered the courage to tell prosecutors about the two murders and everything else he could recall about his “twisted” father. He finally “felt free.”

Charles was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.

Pixie spent six years in prison for the death of her son, Skipper, while her brother, Willie, was ordered to spend 25 years in prison for killing Joel.

Eddie was sentenced to death, and he and Estella, who was imprisoned for 22 years, both died behind bars from natural causes.

“He should have died a brutal death, instead he dies in his sleep,” insisted Charles, who noted that while he doesn’t blame his mother for what happened to him and his siblings, he will never forgive his father. “I’ll take my last breath hating that man.”

For more on this case, tune into Evil Lives Here “Fear Thy Father” on June 16 at 8/7c. on ID or stream on discovery+.