Miranda Barbour's Sister: She Is Lying About Murder

By Nicole Weisensee Egan

04/02/2014 at 07:00 PM EDT

Miranda Barbour

Mark Makela/Reuters/Landov

Miranda Barbour, the Pennsylvania woman who claims she's a serial killer, is a liar, her sister says in a new interview with a local newspaper.

Barbour is a fan of Showtime's now-defunct series Dexter , about a serial killer who kills serial killers, and is lifting her claims straight from the show, Ashley Dean told The Daily Item in Sunbury, Pa.

"If you listen to what she is saying, she is using descriptions from the show," says Dean, 22, who lives in Alaska. "Miranda is just saying these things."

Barbour, 19, and her husband, Elytte, 22, are charged with the Nov. 11 murder of Troy LeFerrara, 42. Authorities say they lured him to his death via Craiglist. Miranda appeared in court Tuesday for the case but didn't say a word.

Barbour made the claims of murdering as many as 22 people to The Daily Item in February.

"She is a master at lying," her sister told the same reporter this week. "She takes a lot of truths and puts the lie in the middle so when people talk to her they see all these truths and then they believe the lie."

Her father, Sonny Dean, told The Daily Item similar things about his daughter in February, noting she had spent most of her life in and out of treatment for heroin addiction.

"Believe very little of what Miranda says," he told the paper. "She has a long history of extreme manipulation and dishonesty."

While he believes she is a satanist and may have participated in a murder in Alaska, he says he does not believe she's a serial killer.

"I would be very surprised if any evidence was found concerning other victims in the states of Alaska, Texas, California and North Carolina," he told the paper.

Authorities in those states say they are taking her claims seriously but so far have found no evidence to support her claims.

Both Sonny and Ashley have done few media interviews beyond the tiny Pennsylvania paper, trying to stay out of the limelight as much as possible.

"I'm just sad," Ashley told the paper. "I really thought my sister was getting her stuff together."

"She had a child, a job, a car she bought on her own and a whole life ahead of her," she says. "It breaks my heart to see my baby sister in this."