Suspect in Vanessa Marcotte slaying pleads guilty to second-degree murder

WORCESTER - The man charged in the 2016 slaying of Vanessa Marcotte in Princeton has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Angelo Colon-Ortiz was initially charged with first-degree murder, but agreed to a lesser charge during an appearance in Superior Court Wednesday. Besides second-degree murder, he pleaded guilty to unarmed robbery.

Marcotte, 27, a popular Google employee, was killed while out for a run in her hometown in August 2016.

Vanessa’s uncle, Steven Therrien, had two victim impact statements prepared — one for John Marcotte, Vanessa’s father, who died Oct. 16 from “complications of a broken heart overcome by six long painful years of agonizing grief, sadness, loneliness and despair" — and the other for himself.

Therrien started with the victim impact statement for Mr. Marcotte.

“Her (Vanessa’s) presence, her voice and her words could immediately elevate his (Mr. Marcotte’s) mood and provide him with endless joy and happiness,” Therrien said. “Her accomplishments made him swell with pride. Her smile and laughter fed his spirit.”

But on Aug. 7, 2016, that all changed, Therrien said.

“Vanessa’s senseless and tragic murder left John emotionally shellshocked. The grief he endured was constant and endless,” Therrien said. “The eight months it took to find a suspect was excruciating on his health and life. He stopped working. He made it his business to follow the case as closely as possible. He had signs made asking the public for help.”

Therrien said that when Colon-Ortiz was apprehended, Mr. Marcotte experienced a “brief period of relief and satisfaction” followed by years of frustration waiting for the final sentence.

Mr. Marcotte was in “full support” of the plea deal and getting “this monster” behind bars, Therrien said.

In his victim impact statement, Therrien described how his niece fought for her life to the very end and was able to obtain DNA evidence that would lead to the identity of her killer.

“Sadly, on that day, she (Vanessa) had the horrendous misfortune to fall into the trap set by a sexual predator who deemed that his needs trumped Vanessa’s right to walk on a country road, to talk and text with friends, to ward off advances made by strangers, and, indeed, to live or die,” Therrien said. “In that unwelcomed encounter, Vanessa fought for those rights and was able to capture the defendant’s DNA under her fingernails…So, as we stand here today, it was Vanessa’s heroic struggle overcoming incredible odds that led to this defendant’s capture and conviction.”

Having no children of his own, Therrien spoke about how Vanessa was “a special gift” in his and his wife’s lives.

“She warmed our hearts,” Therrien said. “She brought us joy. We relished in her achievements. We propped her up in those times of sadness. We loved that she got to work at Google headquarters in New York City.”

Therrien said her niece came to Princeton to get away from city life and to have dinner with her father and visit her mother, as well as dinner with him and his wife.

In closing, Therrien addressed the parole board that an 81-year-old Colon-Ortiz might face 45 years in the future.

“Please, lock him up,” Therrien said. “Lock him up. Throw away the key and lock him up.”

Vanessa’s aunt, Diega Therrien, damned the defendant while celebrating the spirit of her niece.

“Today, I will not utter the defendant’s name. I will call him what he is – a murderer and a monster,” Mrs. Therrien said. “Today, I will tell you about our beautiful girl. Her name was Vanessa Teresa Marcotte. She was not just a victim, a case, a story. She was a living, breathing, vibrant human being with hopes and dreams like many of us. But she did more than hope (and) dream. She did things.”

Mrs. Therrien rattled off some of her niece’s fundraising and volunteering projects in the past and her dreams for the future.

“ 'Auntie, there’s so much I can learn there (at Google). I want to do something good in the world. I mean it,’ ” Mrs. Therrien said quoting Vanessa. “And I know she would have. She was smart enough to do it. She had the will to do it. And the kind heart and generous spirit to do it.”

Mrs. Therrien lamented how she lost a “wonderful child” that she watched grow up from the day she was born.

“I lost the lovely young woman who told me, knowing I have no children of my own, that she would take care of me when I got old. I lost the future that day,” Mrs. Therrien said. “I lost the light of my life. Everyone lost something that day, whether you knew Vanessa or not, because none of us will ever get to experience the good she intended to do.”

Before thanking the state police and the district attorney’s office, Mrs. Therrien said it’s her hope that “this murderer” never walk free again.

“He showed Vanessa no mercy,” Mrs. Therrien snapped. “I have none for him.”

Rossana Marcotte, Vanessa's mother

Rossana Marcotte started the last victim impact statement by introducing herself as having the privilege and honor of being Vanessa’s mother for more than 27 years.

Mrs. Marcotte was escorted to the podium by Caroline Tocci and Ashley McNiff. In addition to being Vanessa’s cousin and “best friend,” Tocci and McNiff are cofounders of the Vanessa T. Marcotte Foundation, which sponsors workshops and webinars on self-defense, violence prevention, runner safety, boundary setting and healthy relationships.

“She was my only child,” Mrs. Marcotte said as she fought to hold back tears. “She was my world.”

Mrs. Marcotte said she plays the event of Aug. 7, 2016, continually in her mind and the one thing she remembers very clearly is the last time she saw her daughter’s “lovely smile.”

“When she smiled, I smiled,” Vanessa’s mother said. “My heart was full.”

Mrs. Marcotte said the “brutal and evil actions” of the defendant that day will have an everlasting effect on her life.

“I will never be able to experience Vanessa’s future achievements in her career or personal life,” Mrs. Marcotte said. “I will never see her in her wedding gown. I will never (have) the pleasure of being a devoted grandmother to her children. And, as I age, I will never be comforted or cared for by Vanessa.”

Referencing her husband (and Vanessa’s father), who died Oct. 16 of “a broken heart caused by his deep and endless grief,” Mrs. Marcotte pointed out that in the last 10 days she had to write her husband’s obituary and a victim impact statement regarding her daughter’s murder, neither of which she should have needed to do, she said.

She implored the parole board in 2062 to deny the defendant’s request for parole.

“He (Colon-Ortiz) must remain in prison until his last breath is taken,” Mrs. Marcotte concluded.

Eduardo Masferrer, attorney for the defense, said Colon-Ortiz is “remorseful” for his actions.

Colon-Ortiz, 36, who had worked in the area where the body was found, was arrested in April 2017.

The two charges come with a sentence of 45 years before he is eligible for parole.

Wednesday’s change of plea hearing comes less than two months before Colon-Ortiz was slated for a trial. The Office of District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr said the plea spares the Marcotte family the need to listen to details of Vanessa's death during a trial.

"We know nothing can bring Vanessa back, but we know, through the meticulous work of the prosecutors and investigators, justice will be served, and the plea allows Vanessa's family to move on from this tragedy," Early said in a statement after the proceeding.

“We are thankful and gratified the legal process has accomplished what we always wished for, that this man will now be in a place where he can’t hurt anyone else like the way he hurt Vanessa,” the Marcotte family said. “To honor and remember Vanessa, we will continue to educate and protect women through the Vanessa T. Marcotte Foundation."

The possibility of a plea change hearing was not discussed at the last status hearing in the case Aug. 18.

At that hearing, lawyers for Colon-Ortiz asked the trial be delayed for scheduling reasons, but Judge Janet Kenton-Walker denied the request, noting the family did not want any further delays.

Members of Marcotte’s family have been awaiting justice since the Aug. 7, 2016, discovery of her partially nude and disrobed body in the woods off Brooks Station Road in Princeton.

She had been visiting her mother from New York City, and was out for some exercise at the time she was killed.

She was reported missing after she did not return, and was found around 8 p.m. about a half a mile from her mother’s home.

Parts of Marcotte’s body had been burned, and she appeared to have fought her attacker. While DNA from her body eventually matched Colon-Ortiz, the road to that match was a long one.

As the case received coverage in national and international outlets, townspeople in Princeton were warned to be on alert by authorities since it was not yet known whether the attack was random.

It would be eight months before Colon-Ortiz was arrested following an extensive investigation that authorities have said resulted from a combination of old-school detective work and forensics.

Authorities were able to retrieve DNA from the suspected killer underneath Marcotte’s fingernails, and learned from advanced profiling that the suspect was likely to be a Hispanic man of about 30.

A witness traveling to church had seen a dark SUV parked on Brooks Station Road around the same time Marcotte disappeared, and state police began collecting DNA samples of Hispanic men who drove such SUVs.

Police collected more than 300 samples voluntarily without a match before Trooper Robert Parr reported seeing Colon-Ortiz driving a Ford Escape at an intersection in Worcester’s Main South.

Parr reported writing the license plate number of the Escape - which was the model the witness had estimated he saw - on his hand.

He and other troopers then visited Colon-Ortiz’s Worcester home at 68 Woodland St., Apt. 1, where they collected a DNA sample from him that matched the evidence.

“We got him,” Early declared at an April 15, 2017, press conference announcing the man’s arrest.

Early, in addition to thanking the detectives who worked the case, thanked Marcotte.

"It was through her determined fight and her efforts that we obtained the DNA of her killer," he said.

Authorities have said that cellphone location information linked Colon-Ortiz - a married father of three who made package deliveries in the Princeton area - to town that day, and that his credit card was used to buy $5 of gas from a nearby station that afternoon.

Gasoline was found on some of the clothing, including a hairpin, that investigators had found on Marcotte.

Other clothing she had been wearing had not been recovered as of September 2017.

Prosecutors on Oct. 14 of this year indicted Colon-Ortiz on an added charge of unarmed robbery. The indictment accuses him of taking the “personal property” of Marcotte, but does not offer further detail.

The lengthiest court battle preceding Colon-Ortiz’s plea was over the DNA evidence, which his lawyers tried to have thrown out of the case on allegations of translation errors at the time the sample was collected.

Colon-Ortiz’s lawyers, during an evidentiary hearing in summer 2021, alleged that a faulty Spanish state police consent form coupled with poor translation from an underqualified trooper rendered the form the man signed meaningless.

Kenton-Walker, while agreeing the form was poorly translated, ruled that it, along with police testimony regarding the conversation, was enough to pass legal muster.

In the years since Marcotte’s death, family and friends have sought to honor her memory by addressing violence against women.

The Vanessa T. Marcotte Foundation, established by her best friend and her cousin, offers programs to help boys avoid future negative behaviors, mentorship programs for girls, self-defense classes for women and financial support for domestic violence organizations.

The foundation’s motto is “Fighting for a world where women live boldly and fearlessly.”

Marcotte has been recalled by family and friends as a compassionate, driven person who centered on others.

“Countless hours were quietly spent helping at a food bank, tutoring and mentoring high school students, supporting Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital, and planting community gardens in the inner city,” the foundation notes. “Vanessa always found time to embrace the spirit of giving back.”

A Leominster native, Marcotte graduated from Bancroft School in Worcester, and graduated with honors from Boston University in 2011.

Her cousin, Caroline Tocci, recalled her in 2017 as a stylish, fun person who managed to balance a serious job with giving back to others, spending time with friends and reflecting on life.

“I had to pinch myself and be like, 'How is she real?' " Tocci said. “She lived life fully."

See telegram.com for coverage of the court proceeding.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Suspect in Vanessa Marcotte slaying expected to plead guilty