Man who killed 2 Lansing area women, planned to kill others enters plea

A long-running legal drama involving a man accused of bludgeoning two Lansing-area women to death in early 2019 is nearly over.

Kiernan Brown, 30, of Delta Township, pleaded guilty but mentally ill Friday to two counts of second-degree murder in connection with the deaths of Kaylee Brock and Julie Mooney. A plea deal sets his minimum prison sentence at 70 years.

Ingham County Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina accepted the plea agreement, nearly two years after she had rejected a controversial plea bargain that might have allowed Brown to leave prison before he dies. The judge set sentencing for Nov. 2.

Brown was charged with killing Brock, 26, in her Holt home and Mooney, 32, in a Meridian Township motel room within hours of each other in May 2019. Both women died from multiple blows to the head with a blunt object, authorities said.

The carnage could have been worse, police said at the time. Brown formed a plan to kill four women after trying and failing to get inside his ex-girlfriend's house early on May 10, 2019, they said. He managed to kill two of them before police caught up with him.

In the aftermath of the murders, Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wriggelsworth said Brown "was on a killing spree."

Brown's attorney, Ronald Berry, declined to comment about the case on Friday.

At the time, Brown was on parole after serving 3 1/2 years in prison for assault by strangulation and domestic assault. He was wanted for a parole violation stemming from another domestic assault days earlier, and Eaton County Sheriff's deputies were looking for him on the night of the murders to serve a legal petition for involuntary commitment for mental health treatment.

When they stopped him on Interstate 69, Brown showed them photos of the bodies of the women he'd killed earlier.

Brown agreed to plead guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in July 2020 as part of a controversial deal with Ingham County Prosecutor Carol Siemon that would have set his minimum sentences in the range of 30 to 50 years.

Aquilina rejected the deal during a scheduled sentencing hearing the following month, saying she was inclined to send Brown to prison for at least 80 years. Brown chose to withdraw his guilty pleas.

The judge said Siemon tried "to be creative to get around the judge and the Legislature, and quite frankly, the law" in what she described as textbook first-degree murder cases.

Wriggelsworth and the victims' families also criticized the deal as too lenient.

Siemon had earlier said she does not believe in life-without-parole sentences and suggested Brown deserved to have a chance at rehabilitation, even if rehabilitation is unlikely. She acknowledged the case "is the most clear-cut" first-degree murder case she'd seen since becoming prosecutor.

Pleading guilty but mentally ill means Brown will be afforded mental health treatment while serving his prison time, but he couldn't be released early if the treatment is deemed successful.

"We thought this was a fair resolution that would serve the interest of the public and the families involved," Chief Assistant Prosecutor Mike Cheltenham said Friday.

Ingham County Sheriff's Lt. Chauncey Shattuck on Friday lauded the work of detectives Ryan Cramer, Derick Ward and William Lo but declined to comment on the resolution of the case

"I'm proud of the detectives and the work they did in the case," Shattuck said. "Our goal at this point is to provide the best service possible to the families of homicide victims."

Contact Ken Palmer at kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @KBPalm_lsj.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Kiernan Brown, who killed two Lansing area women, enters plea