FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, December 1, 2017
Brownsville Man Convicted of Murder for Fatally Stabbing to Death
His Estranged Wife After Following Her Home from Work
Defendant Slit Victim’s Throat, Stabbed Her Multiple Times as She Sat in Her Car
Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez today announced that a 55-year-old man has been convicted of second-degree murder for fatally stabbing his 45-year-old estranged wife right after she pulled up to her friend’s house after work.
Acting District Attorney Gonzalez said, “The victim in this case never had a chance to protect herself once this defendant pounced on her and slit her throat. He has now been held accountable for this vicious and senseless stabbing death of a woman he once proclaimed to love.”
The Acting District Attorney identified the defendant as Beresford Ashley, 55, of Brownsville, Brooklyn. He was convicted yesterday of second-degree murder and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon following a jury trial before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Ruth Shillingford. He will be sentenced on December 15, 2017, at which time he faces 25 years to life in prison.
The Acting District Attorney said that, according to trial testimony, on September 13, 2016, at approximately 11:37 a.m., the defendant showed up at the workplace of his estranged wife, Karen Ashley, at a nursing home on Linden Boulevard. She saw him and went back into the building and alerted security. A security officer then walked her to her car and she drove to her friend’s house, located at 1483 Blake Avenue.
As she was pulling up to her friend’s house 10 minutes later, according to trial testimony, the defendant blocked her with his car and got into the back seat of her car. Once inside, he stabbed her multiple times about her body and cut her throat from side to side. The victim’s friend came out of her house and the defendant fled. She found the victim slumped over and called 911.
At approximately 1:30 a.m., on September 14, 2016, the defendant walked into the 78 precinct with his hand bleeding and told officers he had an argument with his wife and may have committed an offense. The evidence showed that blood found in the victim’s car was a mixture of her DNA and the defendant’s, and the t-shirt the defendant was wearing contained a mixture of both of their DNA.
The Acting District Attorney said that this was the first Brooklyn trial to use STRmix technology. STRmix is an analytical software that helps DNA analysts interpret mixtures and calculates statistics. In this case, there was blood from both the victim and the defendant and the software assisted the analyst in isolating the defendant’s DNA.
The case was prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorney Sabeeha Madni and Assistant District Attorney Abed Bhuyan, of the District Attorney’s Domestic Violence Bureau, under the supervision of Assistant District Attorney Michele Kaminsky, Bureau Chief.
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