An 18-year-old Wisconsin man will die in prison for shooting his mother and stepfather to fund a plot to assassinate President Trump.
Judge Ralph Ramirez of Waukesha County Circuit Court on Thursday imposed two life sentences with no chance for parole on Nikita Casap, who pleaded guilty in January to two counts of first-degree intentional homicide, the most serious homicide charge under Wisconsin law.
Ramirez called the offenses "horrific" and "inexplicable" and denied any possibility of future release.
"I choose to find he's not eligible for extended release because I do not know … when and if and whether a profound and significant change can occur."
The judge said he did not have a "crystal ball" to predict whether Casap would ever change. He chose not to take that chance.
District Attorney Lesli Boese told Judge Ramirez that Casap and his mother, Tatiana Casap, moved to the United States from Moldova. Boese said Casap grew addicted to "disturbing websites" and researched serial killers and school shootings.
According to Boese, the plot to assassinate Trump developed in late 2024. Casap first considered attaching an AK-47 rifle to a drone. He then shifted to a plan involving a drone dropping explosives on the president, after which he planned to flee to Ukraine and hide for a decade, The Hill reports. Boese said Casap told investigators he had not cared how many other people died in the attempt on Trump's life.
Casap sent $8,700 in bitcoin from his stepfather's account to a person who offered to sell him a drone and explosives. He then realized the seller was running a scam and had no drone.
The criminal complaint stated that Casap shot his stepfather, Donald Mayer, and his mother on or around Feb. 11, 2025. According to the complaint, Casap then lived with their bodies for weeks before fleeing across the country with $14,000 in cash, jewelry, his stepfather's gun, and passports. Authorities arrested him Feb. 28, 2025, during a traffic stop in Kansas.
Casap pleaded guilty in January in Waukesha County Circuit Court to two counts of first-degree intentional homicide, meaning an intentional killing carried out with the purpose to cause death. Under the plea agreement, prosecutors dropped seven other charges, including two counts of hiding a corpse and theft.
Defense attorney Paul Rifelj asked Judge Ramirez to grant parole eligibility after 20 years. Rifelj told the court that Casap was sent into a rage after a doctor drove his car into a Christmas market in Germany in December 2024, and that Casap focused on killing a politician as a means to change the world.
Ramirez rejected the request entirely.
Casap spoke through tears in the courtroom Thursday.
"I thought I was part of a revolution. I thought I was part of a war. I told myself bad things had to happen."
He said he missed his mother, Tatiana Casap. He said his stepfather, Donald Mayer, treated him like a son.
Those words landed in a courtroom where Casap had already admitted to killing both of them. He shot the man who raised him like a son and the woman he now says he misses, took their money, lived among their remains for weeks, and ran. The tears came a year later, at sentencing, after the plea deal was already locked in.
The criminal complaint and the prosecution's account describe a case that moved from online radicalization to concrete operational planning to the killing of two family members for funding. Casap wired $8,700 in stolen bitcoin to acquire weapons for an attack on the sitting president. The transaction failed only because the seller was a fraud.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed whether any federal investigation into the assassination plot itself remains active, or whether any other individuals were involved in or aware of Casap's plans. The seven dropped charges have not been fully detailed beyond two counts of hiding a corpse and theft.
Tatiana Casap and Donald Mayer are dead because an 18-year-old convinced himself that killing his own parents was an acceptable step toward political violence against a president. Judge Ramirez ensured that Nikita Casap will never leave prison. That is the system working exactly as it should.
