‘Soulless’ 15-Year-Old Florida Boy Strangles & Buries Mom After Fight Over His Grades

DEBARY, FL — A teenager upset about a fight with his mom over a D he received in school allegedly strangled her to death and then buried her body with the help of two friends.

According to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, Gregory Logan Ramos, 15, got into a heated “dispute” with 46-year-old Gail Cleavenger about his grades on the evening of November 1.

Following the exchange, Cleavenger called Ramos’ stepfather, who was away on a business trip in Seattle, and then she went to bed.

Sheriff Mike Chitwood said that “probably around midnight, [Gregory] came out of his room and went into his mother’s room, where he proceeded to strangle her and thought she was dead.”

But when Ramos got a wheelbarrow and returned for Cleavenger’s body, he discovered she was still alive.

“So he went back to strangle her again,” said Chitwood. “Keep in mind, he didn’t strangle her with a rope, he used his bare hands, which, by his estimate, took him 30 minutes to kill her.”

Ramos allegedly loaded his mother's corpse into her van and then enlisted two friends, 17-year-olds Dylan Ceglarek and Brian Porras, to help him stage a burglary at his family’s home and then take her body to bury underneath a fire pit at River City Church.

According to Chitwood, the boys enjoyed “a celebratory soda” before calling it a night.

Ramos attended classes like normal the following day and when he returned home, he placed a 911 call shortly before 4 P.M. to report there had been a break-in and “his mom was missing and her van was still running in the driveway,” according to authorities.

But once investigators began looking into Ramos’ story, “things were just not adding up,” said Chitwood.

Ramos eventually “confessed to the murder of his mother and implicated his friends” in the crime, the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement, noting deputies “recovered the dumped property that was removed from the home in the staged burglary,” including computers, a Playstation 4, a rifle, and “a shovel and broom used to bury Cleavenger and straighten up the scene around the fire pit.”

Sheriff Chitwood said “cold and calculated” Ramos was “a soulless individual who thought he was gonna outsmart everyone in the room” and showed “no sign of remorse whatsoever.”

“The case we worked … was one of the most disturbing and saddest I’ve seen in my career,” he added. “All our hearts break for this family. I hope the family knows that Gail has all of us fighting for justice for her.”

Read more: People, Miami Herald, WKMG