Jared Remy will go on trial for allegedly murdering his girlfriend.
Credit: Globe pool
Jared Remy, the son of Red Sox broadcaster Jerry Remy, pleaded guilty Tuesday morning to murdering his girlfriend Jennifer Martel last year.
Remy changed his plea during a pre-trial hearing at Middlesex Superior Court. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, assault on Martel, assaulting a man trying to stop the attack and violating a restraining order. He will spend his life in prison without the possibility of parole.
During his sentencing, Remy read a brief statement in which he told people to blame him, not his family, and said that “if you ask my family, they’d rather have me dead than her.”
“I would like you to know that I always told Jen she could leave, but do not threaten me with my daughter. That night, Jen had a knife in her hand and threatened me with my daughter, so I killed her,” Remy said. “I don’t think it’s right when women use their kids against their fathers.”
In a victim impact statement read by their lawyer, Martel’s family said they wanted to get the word out about domestic violence and that they see signs now that they didn’t before.
“Our lives will never be the same again,” they said in their statement.
Martel’s neighbor who witnesses the murder, Kristina Flickinger Hill, also read an impact statement in which she called Martel her best friend.
“She was fun and kind and hardworking and loyal. She saw the best in everyone, even though that might have killed her,” Flickinger Hill said.
Remy, 35, took the stand and was asked various questions by the judge about his past, his medical history and his understanding of his plea change. He said he is being treated with medication for depression.
“Do you understand that for first-degree murder the penalty is mandatory life in state prison without the possibility of parole,” the judge asked Remy.
Nodding his head, Remy said “I understand.”
So the judge would accept his plea change, a prosecutor recounted in heart-wrenching detail Remy’s brutal attack on Martel. The prosecutor said the fatal attack took place just minutes after Martel changed her Facebook relationship status to “complicated.”
A neighbor who heard the commotion and screams looked out of her apartment.
“She saw Jennifer crawling on the patio with the defendant behind her. Jennifer appeared to be wounded and said ‘Help me. Please help me,'” the prosecutor said.
Remy then strangled Martel as she pushed against him, repeatedly stabbed her, slashed at her throat and punched her, the prosecutor said. People seated in the front row of the court audience cried as the murder was detailed.
Remy sat on the witness stand expressionless as the prosecutor read the details.
The judge asked Remy if there were any facts that were different from what the prosecutor summarized.
“She had a knife in her hand. She was threatening me about my daughter,” Remy said.
Authorities said Remy repeatedly stabbed Martel to death in their Waltham apartment in Augustjust days after being arrested for assaulting her. He was released on his own recognizance, which created controversy about the Middlesex district attorney’s decision. Their daughter was home at the time of the killing.
In a jailhouse interview with the Boston Herald in October, Remy denied killing Martel and said the accusation was “ridiculous.”
Remy is also accused of attacking another inmate earlier this year.
Follow Michael Naughton on Twitter @metrobosmike.
