Describing a 22-year-old killer as a "monster" not deserving of rehabilitation, a judge yesterday sentenced Kenny Lamonte Brooks to life in prison with no chance of parole for raping and murdering a real estate agent showing him a house last year in West Baltimore.
In condemning Brooks to a lifetime behind bars, Baltimore Circuit Judge Elsbeth L. Bothe said that she wanted to lend a sense of "finality" for the family of slain real estate agent Lynne McCoy.
"There is virtually no mitigating factor whatever in the commission of this crime and virtually none in Mr. Brooks," the judge said. "I cannot characterize him as a human being entitled to the help and hope of rehabilitation."
The hour-and-a-half sentencing hearing included tearful statements from Brooks, his father and his brother and from Mrs. McCoy's son and daughter. Still, no one could explain why an educated young man from a stable, middle-class family and no )) record of violent crime would smash the real estate agent's head with an antique iron and then rape what he had believed to be her lifeless body.
"It's hard for me to come to grips that I could commit an act as heinous as it was," Brooks said, wiping away tears. "I've been fighting with myself to realize how things happened, but I can't tell you why."
Brooks, a psychiatrist says, suffers from a personality disorder and a propensity for lying and exaggeration.
Although he confessed his crime to police after his arrest and expressed his "guilt and sorrow" to the McCoy family yesterday, Brooks recently told state probation officials that a "Tavon Curney" actually committed the murder. Lawyers on both sides of the case said they doubted such a person even exists.
Also, Brooks claimed to own two cars, a motorcycle and various stocks -- all apparently lies.
In September, a jury deliberated 40 minutes before finding him guilty on all counts in the Dec. 21, 1993, attack on Mrs. McCoy, a 57-year-old agent with O'Conor, Piper & Flynn who showed him a house in the Hunting Ridge neighborhood. After the killing, Brooks fled in the agent's car to his hometown in Illinois, where he was arrested.
Brooks, who was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison in 1991 for a burglary committed after he visited a home with a real estate agent, told police the technique was his "con."
Judge Bothe sentenced Brooks to life without parole for first-degree murder and gave him a consecutive life sentence for first-degree rape and a 20-year, concurrent sentence for armed robbery.
Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty in the case.
John McCoy, the victim's son, said the judge "made a statement that she and our system -- and it is our system -- are willing to protect us. . . . There isn't really any room in our community for people who don't abide by right and wrong."
Mr. McCoy spoke during the hearing of the fear that the crime had generated among Mrs. McCoy's large circle of friends, including one friend who gave up selling real estate. His voice broke when he recalled his 6-year-old son, referring to Brooks, asked, "Daddy, is he going to hurt me too?"
After the sentencing, Mr. McCoy said, "I think I can go home now and say very clearly, 'No, he won't hurt you.' "
During the hearing, prosecutor Laura Mullally read from a letter written by Katie McCoy Chang, the victim's daughter. That letter -- one of about 20 letters submitted on the victim's behalf -- said that Mrs. McCoy did not live to see the birth of Ms. Chang's baby and that the stress the murder placed on the family contributed to Mrs. McCoy's husband's death less than a month later.
"I have to learn to live with words like 'blunt force injury' and 'strangulation' and 'rape' and 'murder' used in association with my mother," the letter read. "Did she live long enough to think she might never see her new granddaughter, that she might miss the chance to see her grandsons grow from babies into boys and young men, that she would not be there for my father as he was dying?
"I know without any doubt that her grief over being separated from us would have been unbearable. I count emotional anguish, however short-lived it may have been, as yet another of the injuries inflicted upon her."