FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Brownsville Man Sentenced to 25 Years to Life for Fatally Stabbing
His Estranged Wife after Following Her Home from Work
Defendant Slit Victim’s Throat, Stabbed Her Multiple Times as She Sat in Her Car
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez today announced that a 48-year-old man was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for fatally stabbing his 45-year-old estranged wife right after she pulled up to her friend’s house after work.
District Attorney Gonzalez said, “This defendant stalked and then mercilessly killed an innocent woman as she was trying to get away from him. He has now been held accountable for his cowardly actions and will spend many years in prison.”
The District Attorney identified the defendant as Andrew David Rhoden, a.k.a., Beresford Ashley, 48, of Brownsville, Brooklyn. He was sentenced today by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Ruth Shillingford to 25 years to life in prison following his conviction on charges of second-degree murder and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon following a jury trial in November 2017.
The 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 Bartley, at a nursing home located 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 78th precinct stationhouse 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 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 calculate 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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