Woman sentenced to life for toddler’s death

The Associated Press
Published: October 6, 2008

PROVIDENCE—A woman convicted of beating her 3-year-old nephew to death after returning to a messy home was sentenced Monday to life in prison, but will be eligible for parole in about 25 years.

Katherine Bunnell, 25, apologized for the October 2004 beating death of Thomas “T.J.” Wright, saying she never meant for it to happen. She was also a foster parent for the boy because his mother - Bunnell’s sister - was in an Illinois prison at the time on drug charges.

The killing sparked a state investigation into why the toddler and his siblings were placed in Bunnell’s custody and is also at the center of a pending civil rights lawsuit that seeks major changes to the state’s foster care system.

“It’s gonna hurt each and every day for the rest of my life,” Bunnell told Providence Superior Court Judge Gilbert Indeglia at the sentencing hearing.

A jury convicted Bunnell in May of second-degree murder and murder conspiracy.

She took responsibility for abusing Wright, but denied delivering the worst blows to the toddler. Defense attorneys have argued that her live-in boyfriend Gilbert Delestre - who was charged separately and is awaiting his own trial - threw the boy across the room.

“It’s hard to live each day labeled as a baby killer. I never meant for this to deliberately happen,” Bunnell said. “I want to apologize to my whole family.”

Karen Wright, Bunnell’s sister and the mother of the toddler, asked the judge for leniency and said she believed Delestre was more to blame.

“She doesn’t deserve murder charges,” Wright said.

Delestre’s attorney, Robert Mann, did not immediately return a phone message Monday.

While Indeglia said he considered the sisters’ statements, he did not appear swayed.

“I believe the defendant caused what happened that night,” he said. “She’s the one who dragged him down the stairs. She was there when Delestre flung that child across the room ... She was there. And what did she do? She got in her car and drove off with her babysitter.”

Prosecutors have said Bunnell and Delestre came home from a night of drinking on Oct. 30, 2004, to find a mess in their living room.

She repeatedly dragged him around the couple’s Woonsocket apartment, dropping him on the floor and causing him to hit his head. Wright also acknowledged slapping his face back and forth and hitting his body. Near the end of her tirade, she poured milk on his head as he lay on the kitchen floor.

“The only question in his mind must have been, ‘Why?’,” prosecutor Stacey Veroni said Monday. “This 3-year-old boy called her mommy, and he died at her hands.”

Bunnell’s lawyer, Therese Caron, said the foster care system saddled her with too much responsibility at too young an age by placing several of her sister’s children in her care.

A report issued a year after Wright’s death found that the state should never have placed the child with Bunnell and Delestre, who each had juvenile records and were already raising two children of their own.

“What was the state of Rhode Island thinking?” Caron asked.

With good behavior, Bunnell will be eligible for parole in 20 years on the life sentence she received for second-degree murder. She was also sentenced to a consecutive 10 years for conspiracy to commit murder, and will have to serve about one-third of that term before she is eligible for parole.