Chester County man who filmed his fatal assault on girlfriend sentenced to life, plus 18 to 40 years
WEST CHESTER — The northern Chester County man whose 2021 murder of his girlfriend was captured on home surveillance video he had installed out of his jealous desire to control her was sentenced Monday for the “unspeakably heinous” crime he committed.
Speaking to a hushed but packed Courtroom One in the Chester County Justice Center, Common Pleas Court Judge Alita Rovito told defendant Leroy “Lee” Brahm III that she was adding 18 to 40 years onto the mandatory life in state prison without parole sentence for first-degree murder in the death of 21-year-old Downingtown native Annabel Rose Meenan, for assaults he committed before the day she died.
“There is no chance here for you,” the judge told Brahm as he sat silently at the defense table. “You show no indication that you can ever be rehabilitated. Sir, your actions were depraved. They showed a supreme indifference to human life. I find you acted with physical and mental cruelty.
“To not sentence you to consecutive sentences would depreciate the seriousness of the offenses,” she said.
The judge’s sentence came after she gave a blistering recitation of the facts in the case that were presented at the trial she presided over, and after she heard from family, friends and co-workers of Meenan speak about what the loss of her life meant to them.
Rovito also let Brahm know how she viewed the images of him beating Meenan the night she died, images that were played on video during the trial. The judge appeared offended by the callousness he showed.
“On the night she died you were like a caged animal,” she said. “And she died at some point, but what did you do? You rested. You didn’t care.” It took him hours to call for an ambulance.
Brahm, 33, of East Vincent did not speak on his own behalf. For most of the 90-minute proceeding, at which speaker after speaker leveled their anger at him for killing Meehan, he sat slumped in his chair, his head cocked to the side, occasionally staring at the ceiling.
His attorney, Scott McIntosh of Royersford, made no significant argument on what his client’s sentence should be, saying only that he hoped that Rovito would run the assault charges he was found guilty as a concurrent sentence — running at the same time as the life punishment for murder.
“He can’t serve more than his natural life,” McIntosh said of his client.
The lead prosecutor in the case, Deputy District Attorney Kate Wright, on the other hand, called the murder a “horrendously violent ending” to the life of a woman who was “a light in. The lives of her family, her friends and her co-workers.” She said a consecutive sentence to the life term he will serve would acknowledge the “independently violent incidents” that came before the final, fatal assault.
“There is nothing that will ever fill the gaping hole that the defendant has torn in the fabric of their lives,” wrote Wright in her sentencing memo, referring to those friends and family. “He must be made to answer for the unspeakably heinous crimes that he has committed — not just for what he took but how he took it.”
Wright noted the cruelty of Meenan’s death in her request for a sentence of life in prison plus 20 to 40 years.
“There can be nothing more grave to Annabel than the ending of her short life,” she wrote. “She scarcely had the chance to figure out who she was and what she wanted out of life before that life was brutally taken from her.
“He hopes, her potential, and her future were all snatched away by a vicious act of a jealous man,” she said. “Her last few hours on this earth were full of pain, full of fear, and full of degradation.”
Of the many speakers who told Rovito of the impact of Meenan’s death — her father, her sister, a cousin, a best friend, and a co-worker who saw that she was being abused but could not save her — none had words more powerful that Meenan’s mother, Jill Kristine Hunsberger.
In asking Rovito to impose the strongest penalty on Brahm possible, she did not use his name in the letter that Wright read for the court. Instead, she referred to him only by the number he has been assigned at Chester County Prison since his arrest: Inmate 78179.
“Inmate 78179 has taken everything from me,” she wrote. “Inmate 78179 took my daughter. I will never speak his name. Inmate 78179 is without a soul, and without worth.”
A Common Pleas Court jury in February took just over an hour before rendering its verdict for Brahm, finding him guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated assault, and recklessly endangering another person. The panel had listened to hours of testimony and had watched several videos that showed Brahm and Meenan interacting in the small mobile home they occupied, including instances of beatings he waged on her, including the fatal assaults.
In addition to the videos, the evidence against Brahm included text messages he sent to Meenan accusing her of cheating on him; a phone message recorded during a beating in which she was heard pleading with him to stop; videos of them at a Phoenixville bar the night before the murder; testimony from people who knew her and of their stormy relationship; and expert medical and toxicological testimony.
Meenan, who had been dating Brahm since she was a high school student, was beaten repeatedly over a few weeks in November and December 2021. Those were captured on three cameras that Brahm had installed in the Buttonwood Avenue mobile home trailer the two shared.
The violence of the assaults was clear. Brahm was seen throwing punches at Meenan as she lay on their bed, and hopping up and down on her prone body in the living room. The autopsy conducted on her following her death showed multiple bruises and blunt impact injuries to her head, face and torso.
The medical examiner, Dr. Gary Collins of Delaware, said that Meenan had died of cardiac arrest after having ingested cocaine and alcohol. He ruled, however, that the cardiac arrest had been brought on by the physical injuries she suffered during the assaults. The Chester County Coroner’s Office, under then-Coroner Dr. Christina VandePol, ruled the death a homicide.
Brahm was arrested after police and first responders were called to his home in the early morning of Dec. 4, 2021. Police found Meenan “cold to the touch” with obvious injuries when they arrived, with Brahm telling them that he had awoke to find her face down on the living room floor after a night of drinking. Her injuries, he claimed, were the result of “rough sex.”
He was first charged with assault, and then later with murder after Chester County Detectives found the video system in the home and watched video of him beating her that day and in previous days.
The motivation for Brahm’s attacks on Meenan grew from a sexual relationship they had developed with a third person, a Tredyffrin resident named Kevin Walters. Brahm had helped arrange the relationship, and the three had gone on an ocean cruise sometime in the late summer.
It was on that trip that Brahm began to suspect that Meenan was developing a relationship with Walters outside of his presence, and he became jealous. He began following her movements, demanding to know where she was, and in November 2021 tracked her down to his apartment in Wayne when she had told him she was going to visit a relative.
The beatings started thereafter.
In her comments before sentencing, Rovito praised those who had spoken on Meenan’s behalf for keeping her spirit vibrant.
“There is no sentence that will fill the hole in your hearts,” she said as those in the gallery listened intently. “There is no salve for your wounds. But the greatest honor you can give her is to keep talking about her. Because when you talk about her, you breathe life into her.”
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.
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