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In emotional statements to Gavin, Kevin Mengel’s family let loose the anger, resentment, and sorrow that had been largely hidden from public view until now over his death. There is almost no chance that Morgan Mengel will ever be released from prison, he said. Although Carmody had asked Gavin, as sentencing judge, to add a term of 20-to-40 years in prison to the end of her mandatory life term, the judge declined, saying that he thought such sentences irrational. ‘It is your intention to enter a plea of guilty to murder in the first degree, is that correct?’ Gavin asked later. The murder charge carries with it a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.Īfter Carmody recited a lengthy version of the evidence that West Goshen police and Chester County Detectives had amassed against Morgan Mengel – including mention of the text messages she and Shappell exchanged as he was bludgeoning Kevin Mengel to death with two shovels – Gavin asked her whether she agreed with them. The defendant, a small 37-year-old woman with dark brown hair pulled back from her head in a pony tail and dressed in a black pants suit with white blouse, entered guilty pleas for first degree murder, possession of instruments of crime, hindering apprehension, and criminal conspiracy. ‘There is no remorse here,’ said Kevin Mengel’s mother, Kathleen Barton, after the hearing concluded. Morgan Mengel’s words, however, failed to convince her husband’s family that she was truly sorry for what she had engineered. I am hoping that by being held accountable for my actions, we are all able to move forward to some sort of healing.’ ‘There is only one way I can, by taking responsibility today,’ McMahon read from the yellow legal paper on which Morgan Mengel wrote her statement. ‘How am I supposed to make it better for two families?’ her’s and her husband’s, who had been devastated by the murder. ‘How does anyone say they are sorry to three children for the loss of their father?’ Morgan Mengel asked, referring to the daughter and two sons she shared with Kevin Mengel, and who now live with their grandparents. In a statement to the court read by Morgan Mengel’s defense attorney, Jack McMahon of Philadelphia, she attempted to atone for her crime. ‘It’s done, get up here now,’ Shappell wrote. on June 17, 2010, according to evidence in the case. ‘Just waiting for him to bend over, I have shovel in my hand ha-ha,’ Shappell wrote to Morgan Mengel about 10:30 a.m. West Goshen police were able to arrest Shappell and Morgan Mengel several days later after discovering text messages sent between the two before, during, and after Shappell committed the crime. ‘She tried to make her husband disappear, but because of the love of Kevin’s family and the truly excellent work of the police, it didn’t happen,’ Carmody declared. ‘She washed herself of her husband, of her lover, and of her three children. ‘This was the ultimate crime of selfishness,’ Carmody told reporters outside Gavin’s courtroom, after watching members of Kevin’s Mengel’s family hug one another and shed tears of relief in the 7th floor hallway of the Chester County Justice Center. ‘Morgan Mengel only loved herself,’ he said after the hearing before Senior Judge Thomas Gavin, who one year ago had declared a mistrial in the case.

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Mengel, 37, was sentenced to life in state prison without parole, plus a consecutive sentence of 20 years probation for conspiring with Stephen Shappell to kill her 33-year-old husband, Kevin Mengel Jr.Īfter her formal sentencing, Chief Deputy District Attorney Patrick Carmody, who led the prosecution against Mengel along with Assistant District Attorney Deborah Ryan, disputed the notion that the case was one of a love triangle gone bad.

#DATELINE TOXIC TRIAL#

WEST CHESTER - Morgan Marie Mengel, the West Goshen woman accused of engineering the death of her husband at the hands of her young lover, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder charges Tuesday as testimony in her trial was on the verge of beginning.

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