Mother of killed Nashua toddler gets 45 years to life in prison

By CAITLIN ANDREWS

Monitor staff

Published: 12-02-2016 11:19 PM

Called by prosecutors “a case like no other,” the trial of Katlyn Marin came to a close Friday when she received a 45 years to life prison sentence, with 790 days already served, for the death of her three-year old child, Brielle Gage.

Marin was convicted in August of second-degree murder in the death of Brielle, who died of blunt-force injuries in 2014.  Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeff Stelzin said the 27-year-old Marin beat her daughter to death because she was angry that the girl had wet herself and that Brielle had gone into the kitchen at night in search of food.

Nashua police responded to 14 Oak St. in Nashua at about 11:30 a.m. on Nov. 25, 2014, after receiving a medical call about the girl, the attorney general’s office said in a statement. Brielle was taken to a hospital and later declared dead, officials said. 

Stelzin said the state’s minimum sentence in second-degree murder cases is 35 to life, but he pushed for a longer sentence because of the brutality of the case.

“The question isn’t why she (Marin) shoudn’t get the minimum, but how could she not get more,” Stelzin said, going on to describe how Marin lied during a 911 call and continued to lie during the investigation and trial. Marin gave two different accounts of how Brielle died: in one instance, she said her four other children, all brothers, injured Brielle, and in the second instance she said Brielle fell down the stairs twice.

Stelzin said an autopsy revealed over 50 injuries to the child: various bruises found head to toe; multiple contusions found on her ears and face; the broken ribs and bruised lungs; and the subdural hematoma in her head that eventually led to Brielle’s death. He said Marin attacked the child twice during the incident, throwing her into furniture and across the room, and at one point banging her head against the floor. The extent of Marin’s attack was so great that, during the assault, she injured her own toe and hand.

Michael Rivera, Marin’s boyfriend, testified during the bench trial that he had witnessed the abuse, but went back to sleep during the attack. Brielle was left to die on the floor, Stelzin said – and when Rivera later became an eye witness in the case, Marin tried to have him killed.

 Marin had also been physically and verbally abusive not just to Brielle, but her other children, and had encouraged them to lie to the police when the abuses were reported. According to Stelzin, the Division of Children, Youth and Families investigated 10 different instances of neglect and abuse against Marin prior to the murder.

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“Nothing the defendant did to Brielle or the crimes she did afterwards were minimal,” Stelzin said. 

The other four children have since been placed in foster care, and are doing well, according to Stelzin. He could not comment on whether DCYF could have done more to prevent Brielle’s death, noting cases where children are the only eyewitnesses to abuse are extremely difficult to investigate.

“Ultimately, there is one person at fault here, and that’s the defendant,” he said. 

The case was compared to the 2001 Chad Evan case, where a former Rochester man was sentenced to 43 years to life in prison after beating 21-month-old Kassidy Bortner, his girlfriend’s daughter, to death.  

Stelzin pointed out both Marin and Evan were reported to have degraded and verbally abused their victims. And in both cases, the victims died of multiple blunt-force traumas.

“This is a woman who stood over her broken and bleeding daughter and lied to 911,” he said. “There’s no limit to what she’ll do . . . In my 20 years of prosecution, I’ve never seen a case like this.”

Justin Shepard, Marin’s attorney, maintained that Marin’s actions were the result of a difficult life: her mother abused her, and she was assaulted and preyed upon by the men her mother dated. He said she was alone, and left to manage her five children alone with no support. From the beginning, he said, she didn’t stand much of a chance.

“Her first 27 years will be wretched,” he said. “And the next 35 will be wretched. That’s longer than she’s been on this earth – she’s been stripped of everything.” 

Marin spoke of how much she missed Breille, saying the feeling of losing her child was “earth shattering, heart stopping, breathtaking.” She said she had lost her entire family, save her father, as a result of Brielle’s death, and would continue to miss her.

“I can’t explain the emotions you feel when a child passes,” she said. 

Stelzin pushed back, noting Brielle did not “pass” in a peaceful sense and that Marin continued to deflect blame for what happened to her child.

“Having a rough and difficult life does not excuse her decision to have five children, treat them like garbage, and decide to kill one of them,” he said. 

Prior to sentencing, Judge Charles Temple said regardless of what punishment he decided, there would be “absolutely nothing to celebrate today.” Instead, he encouraged those who cared about Brielle to remember her life by focusing on her birthday instead of her death, and to accept no funeral will be held for the child. Marin has maintained possession of Brielle’s cremated remains, and her grandmother, Sharon Boucher, said during the sentencing all the family has to remember Brielle by is a bench at a local playground.

“I will do my best to wipe out the photographs I viewed of Brielle today and during the trial,” Temple said, recalling images submitted to him of Brielle taken immediately after her death, which were not shown to the public in the courtroom. “Instead, I want you to focus on the pictures of her when she was alive and vibrant.”

(Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com, or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)

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