Ruth Dirienzo-Whitehead, 51, has been sentenced to life in prison for killing her 11-year-old son before driving to a Jersey Shore beach where investigators said she drove her vehicle in the ocean in April of last year. NBC10’s Deanna Durante has the story.
Ruth Dirienzo-Whitehead, 51, has been sentenced to life in prison for killing her 11-year-old son before driving to a Jersey Shore beach where investigators said she drove her vehicle in the ocean in April of last year.
During the course of the case Dirienzo-Whitehead has maintained her silence. On Friday, however, she admitted she took her son's future and asked for forgiveness.
Dirienzo-Whitehead told the court only a "monster would do something like this." She also told the court that she knows the life her son should have had and she was proud of him.
She never said why she took a belt and strangled her son.
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Before Dirienzo-Whitehead was sentenced, her brother also broke his silence, saying the family missed the signs that she was suffering.
In hearings this week, Dirienzo-Whitehead's defense argued that she strangled her son, Matthew Whitehead, to death with a belt on April 10 in a bedroom of their Horsham Township home because she was having a psychotic break and felt she was sparing her son a painful life.
Dirienzo-Whitehead was later found walking in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey, shortly after and taken into custody.
A defense expert testified that Dirienzo-Whitehead suffered from depression and mental illness at the time of the killing.
And, her lawyer told NBC10 that she felt her world was crashing in on her, financial pressures and her son's awareness of them had become too much for the Horsham mom.
However, prosecutors argued that the killing was premeditated, revealing that she had numerous Google searches on how to strangle someone and she had done research on mental illnesses that lead moms to kill their own kids.
Prosecutors argued that Dirienzo-Whitehead blamed her husband for the family's financial issues and said she was motivated to kill her child by a mix of anger and revenge.
While delivering the guilty verdict on Thursday morning, a judge in a Montgomery County courtroom refused to find mental illness as a defense.
On Friday, prosecutors successfully argued Dirienzo-Whitehead knew killing her son was wrong and that she was acting out of revenge and not mental illness.
The defense says it will appeal for a shorter sentence.
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