Man pleads guilty to killing Vanessa Marcotte, Google employee who went missing while jogging near her mother's home in 2016
A delivery driver charged with killing a Google employee from New York who went missing while out for a run near her mother's Massachusetts home six years ago pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Wednesday.
Angelo Colon-Ortiz had originally pleaded not guilty to murder in the death of Vanessa Marcotte, 27, whose body was found Aug. 7, 2016, in a wooded area about a half-mile from her mother's house in the small town of Princeton, about 40 miles west of Boston.
Under an agreement that also included a guilty plea to a charge of unarmed robbery, the 36-year-old will not be eligible for parole for 45 years, according to the office of Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr.
Before the judge accepted the plea, family members gave a series of victim impact statements, CBS Boston reported.
Steve Therien, Marcotte's uncle, said her father died just 10 days ago. Vanessa was his only child.
"Let's keep this monster off the streets... I'll be dead long before he gets a parole hearing," Marcotte's father said, according to Therien.
Marcotte's aunt choked back tears as she addressed the courtroom.
"She was a living, vibrant human being with hopes and dreams like us," she said. "I lost something that day."
The Marcotte family agreed to the deal to spare themselves the ordeal of a trial, prosecutors said.
"We are thankful and gratified the legal process has accomplished what we always wished for, that this man will now be in a place where he can't hurt anyone else like the way he hurt Vanessa," Marcotte's family said in a statement released by the district attorney's office.
Marcotte, who worked as an account manager for Google, was visiting family in Massachusetts and had gone out for a run several hours before she was found.
She was found partially clothed with burn marks on her body, and an autopsy determined that she had been strangled during a struggle, news outlets reported at the time.
Colon-Ortiz, who lived in nearby Worcester, worked as a delivery driver at the time of the killing and was familiar with Princeton and the surrounding area, prosecutors have said.
According to prosecutors, Colon-Ortiz's DNA matched DNA found underneath Marcotte's fingernails. He was arrested in April 2017 and as been held without bail since pleading not guilty in July 2017 to charges including attempted rape, which was not included in the deal announced Wednesday.
Marcotte's younger cousin, Caroline Tocci, told CBS News in 2017 that Marcotte was her "other half."
"She is my person," Tocci said. "She loved to run and she loved to practice yoga. Anything outside being with friends and family."
Tocci started a foundation in her cousin's memory.
