Co-defendant Chelsea Ann-Marie Shipp had already admitted shooting 16-year-old Katelynn Stone and received a 40-year prison term.
BEAUMONT, Texas — A Jefferson County jury has sentenced Cody Arnold to 34 years in prison after convicting him in the 2022 killing of 16-year-old Katelynn Stone, a case prosecutors said grew out of fear that Arnold could face consequences if the girl was pregnant.
The sentence closes the trial phase of a case that had already sent Chelsea Ann-Marie Shipp, Arnold’s co-defendant, to prison for 40 years under a plea agreement. The central issue at Arnold’s trial was not whether Stone died in his home. It was whether Arnold shared legal responsibility for murder even though prosecutors said Shipp fired the shot. The case drew attention across southeast Texas because Stone was a teenager, investigators found her body in Arnold’s bed, and court records described steps to conceal the killing instead of reporting it.
The public timeline began on March 26, 2022, when investigators later said Stone was shot at Arnold’s home in west Jefferson County. The next day, at about 5 p.m., deputies were told of a possible murder at a residence in the 14000 block of Kolb’s Corner. Inside, officers found the body of a teenage girl with a gunshot wound. The sheriff’s office later identified her as Katelynn Nicole Stone of Vidor. Arnold was arrested at the home and booked on a murder charge, with bond set at $1 million. Four days after the body was found, deputies and officers in Liberty Hill arrested Shipp on the same charge. By then, the investigation had widened from a shooting inquiry into a case about what happened before the gunfire and what the two suspects did after Stone was dead.
Investigators said witness accounts, physical evidence and Arnold’s own statements became the backbone of that case. According to a probable cause affidavit later described in court reporting, Arnold told investigators that Stone was his girlfriend and that an at-home test had shown she was possibly pregnant. He also said he had been using methamphetamine with Shipp and that the two argued about Stone’s age and his relationship with her. Arnold told officers that he left the bedroom and then came back to see Shipp pointing a gun at Stone while the girl was lying in bed. He said Shipp pulled the trigger. But detectives said his account did not end the inquiry. They found Stone’s body on the bed, a shell casing on the pillow beside her, and evidence that part of her body had been wrapped in a garbage bag and blanket. Investigators also said Arnold failed to report the killing, lied about when he last saw Stone and helped look for a vehicle that could be used to move the body.
Witness statements described a scene that prosecutors said looked less like panic and more like planning. A friend told investigators that Shipp borrowed her car on March 26 because she had “business to take care of,” then returned it the next morning. Another witness told detectives Shipp later said, “I got rid of her,” and made a shooting motion with her fingers. Court records cited in local reporting also said Shipp told another person that Arnold had asked her to “take care of a problem.” Those accounts fit the state’s theory that the killing was tied to Stone’s age, her relationship with Arnold and the fear that a pregnancy could expose him to criminal consequences. Prosecutor Jimmy Hamm told jurors during trial that Arnold and Shipp were “talking about what they were going to do” before the shooting. Public summaries of the defense case were limited, but the trial record made clear that jurors were asked to decide whether Arnold was merely present or whether he acted alongside Shipp before and after the shot.
The case remained disturbing even as one key factual question became less certain. Prosecutors said Stone and Arnold were living together and that Arnold feared what might happen if others learned he had impregnated a 16-year-old. Yet a preliminary autopsy released days after her death reportedly found no evidence of pregnancy. That did not end the motive theory. Instead, the state argued that what mattered was what Arnold and Shipp believed or feared at the time. The killing also stayed in the public eye because of the way investigators described the room where Stone was found. Reports said her body had been left in Arnold’s bedroom for many hours, with a shell casing on the pillow and a trash can with a fresh liner nearby. In southeast Texas, those details became shorthand for a case that moved slowly through court but never lost its force. Stone was 16, from nearby Vidor, and was found in a house where investigators said she had been living with an older boyfriend.
The court process stretched across nearly four years. In June 2022, a Jefferson County grand jury indicted Arnold and Shipp on murder charges. Shipp’s case ended first. On June 6, 2025, Judge John Stevens sentenced her to 40 years in prison after she entered a plea agreement and admitted she shot and killed Stone at Arnold’s home. Arnold remained jailed while his case moved toward trial in Jefferson County’s Criminal District Court. By March 2026, the legal question had narrowed to whether his conduct made him criminally liable for murder even if Shipp was the shooter. A jury found Arnold guilty on Monday, March 23. During the punishment phase, he faced a range that could have reached life in prison. On Tuesday afternoon, March 24, jurors set his punishment at 34 years. The next formal stage is expected to be any post-trial motion or appeal that may follow the sentence.
In the courtroom and in public records, the case was built from stark images and blunt statements. Prosecutors pointed to the body in the bed, the bag and blanket, the borrowed car and the witness accounts that said Shipp confessed more than once. Arnold’s own statement placed him in the house at the moment of the shooting and tied the argument to Stone’s age and a possible pregnancy. The sheriff’s office, which first asked the public for help while Shipp was still being sought, later credited several agencies for helping track her down in Liberty Hill. By the time Arnold was sentenced, the broad outline of the case had held through arrests, indictment, plea negotiations and trial: a teenage girl was shot while lying in bed, one defendant admitted pulling the trigger, and the other was found guilty after prosecutors argued that he helped set the crime in motion and then helped hide what happened. For Stone’s family and for many people in Jefferson County, the sentence did not change the facts of the killing, but it marked the end of one more chapter in a case that has been public since the spring of 2022.
As of March 29, both defendants have lengthy prison sentences in the same case, 40 years for Shipp and 34 years for Arnold. The next public milestone is any filing Arnold makes to challenge the verdict or sentence as the case moves beyond trial court.
Author note: Last updated March 29, 2026.