Teen Killer`s Home Auctioned Off

The scene of the non-crime has been sold, but the basics of life haven't changed much for Jasmine Karo, the teenager who fatally stabbed her abusive father last year.

Her family's home was auctioned at a sheriff's sale Wednesday.

The Gloucester City bungalow had only one bidder: Federal National Mortgage Association, the company that gave Alan Karo and Margie Smiling a loan to buy the home in 1994, took it back for $86,141.22.

The family will probably have to move out within two months.

It was in the kitchen there that Karo, then 18, stabbed her father in the neck with a kitchen knife. Karo was charged with murder, but a Camden County grand jury declined to indict her.

Joseph Gorman, a family friend and Jasmine Karo's former school guidance counselor, said the teen, who was cleared of criminal charges last summer, is neither going to college or working. She and her boyfriend are looking for a place to live in Philadelphia, where she has a job lined up, Gorman said.

Her mother has entered an alcohol rehabilitation program and plans to move in with a friend in New Jersey or relatives in North Carolina. And Karo's 13-year-old sister is living with a foster family

"In every significant way that you want to measure, nothing's really improved for Jasmine since this time last year," Gorman told The Philadelphia Inquirer for Thursday's editions. "Economically, socially, nothing's better. They're just stuck in the mire in so many different ways."

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