The man is Andreas Erazo, 24, who grew up in Middletown but was living in Keansburg at the time of the crime. He was 18 when he kidnapped, raped and then fatally stabbed Abbiegail Smith, his 11-year-old downstairs neighbor. The two lived a few doors down from each other in the same Keansburg apartment building.
Erazo is currently serving life in prison after he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and aggravated sexual assault of a victim under the age of thirteen. He must serve 63 years of his life sentence before becoming eligible for parole.
Erazo has filed multiple appeals since he was sentenced to life in prison. Each of his appeals has been filed by the same lawyer who continues to represent him, Morgan Birck, a Monmouth County public defender.
Abbiegail's mother, aunts and other extended family members spoke at his sentencing. The convicted child rapist and killer argues their negative comments "that verbally attacked him" swayed the judge in his sentencing.
The three Monmouth County Superior Court judges said bluntly: "We disagree. In the case of a homicide, the victim's survivors may make an in-person statement directly to the sentencing court concerning the impact of the crime."
His lawyer also argued that Erazo was subject to "cruel and unusual punishment" due to the length of the sentence he was given when he was only 18. The judges said they disagreed with that argument, also.
On the night of July 12, 2017 Erazo raped the pre-teen girl in his apartment and killed the child by stabbing her in the neck with a knife. The next day, the police found the girl's body tied with computer cords and wrapped in a futon cover on a section of the roof of a shed outside his bedroom window.
Erazo was victorious in one appeal his lawyer filed: In 2022, Brick argued that detectives with the Monmouth County Prosecutor's office violated his Miranda rights when they first questioned him. in that instance, a judge re-examined the sentencing, but still upheld his life-in-prison sentence.
The public defender assigned to Erazo previously argued that Erazo was raised by a single mother and was later placed in a group home. He was living with a maternal aunt when he killed the girl. They say Erazo suffered from "major depressive disorder, ADHD, bipolar disorder," and had made multiple suicide attempts. He also had been abusing drugs, including cocaine and heroin, since the age of twelve.
TRENTON - The state Supreme Court Wednesday reversed an appellate court ruling that would have allowed the killer and rapist of an 11-year-old Keansburg girl to take back his guilty plea and go to trial.
The state's high court, in its unanimous decision reinstating the murder and rape convictions of Andreas Erazo, said detectives were not required to read Miranda rights to the defendant when he voluntarily went to the Keansburg police station in 2017 to give a witness statement about the disappearance of Abbiegail Smith, his young, downstairs neighbor.
Therefore, the court said he was not owed Miranda warnings, the recitation by police that informs suspects they have the right to remain silent and have an attorney present during questioning, the court said.
During his initial interview, Erazo claimed to know nothing about the girl's disappearance. But after that interview, police heard from a witness who saw Abbiegail enter Erazo's apartment, so they questioned him again, that time after administering the Miranda warnings.
Erazo, now 24, eventually admitted stabbing the girl, but told police he thought she was an intruder in his apartment. He claimed to have blacked out and didn't know if he sexually assaulted the child, but his DNA later implicated him in her rape.
The Supreme Court ruled that Erazo's waiver of his Miranda rights before the second interview was knowing, intelligent and voluntary and, therefore, his confession should not be suppressed, as the appellate court had ruled when it said he could take back his guilty plea.
The high court noted Erazo was not restrained during the first interview, which was conducted in an unlocked room. Detectives brought him pizza and water in between the two interviews, the court said.
The high court said the appellate judges should have given deference to the trial judge, who found that "the detectives were not physically overbearing toward the defendant,'' and one of them even spoke to Erazo in a "quiet, conversational, almost paternalistic tone.''
"We are collectively elated over the opinion issued by the New Jersey Supreme Court (Wednesday) morning as it unequivocally validates the stance the Prosecutor's Office has held from the very onset of this case: that this investigation was conducted rigorously, dutifully and in full accordance with established law,'' the statement said.
"This was a uniquely heinous crime, and we are likewise collectively pleased that the family of Abbiegail "Abbie'' Smith can rest assured that the person responsible for cutting her life so brutally and tragically short will now continue serving his lengthy prison term,'' the statement said.
Abbiegail went missing from her apartment in the Hancock Arms complex in Keansburg on July 12, 2017. Her body was discovered the next day, wrapped in a futon cover, on a rooftop outside Erazo's bedroom window. She had been stabbed to death and raped. Most of her clothing had been removed, and her hands and feet were bound with computer cords.
Superior Court Judge David F. Bauman sentenced Erazo in May 2019 to life in prison with the chance to be considered for release on parole after serving 63 years and nine months. He also imposed a 50-year sentence, to run concurrently to the term for murder, for the child's rape.
Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at khop...@app.com
She closes out the letter with a request that she not be forced to work any longer with the male pilots she says are retaliating against her. She names Captain Scott Monjeau, First Officer Warren Mowry and Captain Ray Baltera.
Yet instead of disciplining the perpetrators in any of these incidents, Delta turned on one of its few female captains and instigated a bizarre campaign of attrition that left her navigating a Kafkaesque fog of gaslighting and retaliation, according to an explosive lawsuit filed by her attorneys in a Minnesota court.
Did Ratfield want to keep her job? Her benefits? Her stable paycheck as a single mother of two children who depended on her? Yes, she did. So she went along when given another 90 days of inpatient treatment.
Captain Ratfield had reported sexual harassment internally to HR and management without anyone assisting. Instead, someone decided to get rid of her via the HIMS program. Much of her abuse was at the hands of management pilots.
Karlene Petitt, who has vast direct experience with this, writes in harrowing, crisp detail about how it works. Doctors paid in cash or through Venmo directly by the pilots. Suspiciously outrageous sums of cash charged with no recourse. Petitt knows a pilot who was charged $4,200 by Kozarsky for submitting his files to the FAA.
She asked Delta management and her union in every way possible to assign her to a different doctor. Maybe a female doctor. Ratfield is a woman with a documented history of trauma. This is a no brainer.
But Ratfield, her attorneys tell me, is facing them head on. Not just for her and her family, but for the women who come after her. And for her fellow crewmembers in the cockpit, in the cabin, on the ground right now.
When I read about what she and other women taking on the airline industry are enduring at great cost to themselves, I think of the couplet by Greek poet, novelist and folklorist Dinos Christianopoulos:
My reporting has appeared in national and international publications including U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, The Sunday Times Magazine (UK), People, Glamour, Shape and more. I contributed to the feminist anthology Letters of Intent along with such icons as Judy Blume, Ntozake Shange and Gloria Steinem. Perhaps best known for my viral resignation letter from People magazine, I covered high-profile crime stories for them across Europe and the U.S. including the Amanda Knox case in Italy, the disappearance of Madeline McCann in Portugal, and the tragic school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. I am the author of two mystery novels: The Underdogs and Famous Last Words.
If you\u2019ve experienced harassment, assault or abuse in the airline industry, you can contact me confidentially at MeTooAirlines at Proton.me. If you have information about any of the cases I\u2019ve written about, I can route you to those legal teams
Bastian promises clarity and transparency throughout the $27.5-billion company\u2019s journey to a less white, less male leadership. He writes that he is \u201Ccommitted to correcting our course as we become a more just, equal and anti-racist company.\u201D
In the summer of 2020, Ratfield is balancing a full life as a commercial airline pilot, activist, mother of two young boys with special needs, and trauma survivor. Making life even more challenging: In the midst of it all, she\u2019s been routinely sexually harassed and assaulted at work. Despite reporting the incidents to her bosses, the male pilot perpetrators are never disciplined.
In her email, Ratfield reminds the executives what she\u2019s been through\u2014likely touching on a few examples in a laundry list that includes a male instructor pilot coming to her hotel room at 2 a.m. for \u201Ca drink\u201D and another grabbing her breasts\u2014and outlines again the retaliation she\u2019s endured since reporting the abhorrent behavior.
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