Content material warning: The next article accommodates disturbing description of violence and sexual assault.
A assassin who killed his highschool math trainer was convicted earlier this yr of an assault that had hanging similarities — and although his second sufferer survived, she spoke out about coming head to head with a “monster.”
The case of Philip Chism has disturbed many in Massachusetts for greater than a decade after the October 2013 killing of his 24-year-old math trainer, Colleen Ritzer.
Chism, who was 14 on the time of the killing, was convicted of murdering and raping Ritzer within the lady’s lavatory of his college. After attacking Ritzer, he stuffed her physique right into a recycling bin, rolling it out to the woods subsequent to the varsity. After he’d taken her physique to the woods, he sexually assaulted her a second time.
Choose David Lowy, who sentenced Chism to life behind bars in 2016, stated the coed’s chilling homicide was “brutal and mindless” and stated “the crashing waves of this tragedy won’t ever wane,” PEOPLE reported on the time.
Greater than a decade after the homicide, Chism’s prison conduct was within the information this April when he was convicted of tried homicide in an assault on a correctional officer, which occurred mere months after he was taken into custody for Ritzer’s killing.
Right here’s what occurred:
Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe through Getty
The Homicide
After college set free on Oct. 22, 2013, at Danvers Excessive College, ABC Information reported on the time that Chism adopted Ritzer, a 24-year-old math trainer, into the lady’s lavatory and attacked her. Chism, then 14, strangled Ritzer earlier than stabbing her 16 instances and raping her, later stuffing her physique right into a recycling bin, which he rolled out into the woods close to his college, based on WBUR.
The outlet reported that after Chism introduced Ritzer’s physique into the woods, he then raped the trainer once more utilizing a tree department, stole her underwear and bank cards after which coated her physique with leaves.
PEOPLE reported on the time that Medical Examiner Dr. Anna McDonald, who carried out the post-mortem, stated Ritzer could have nonetheless been alive on the time of Chism’s second assault within the woods. “At minimal, she was within the dying course of,” McDonald informed the jury.
Protection Claimed Chism Was Mentally In poor health, Sufferer’s Mother Stated He Was ‘Pure Evil’
Chism’s protection attorneys questioned his grandfather Eduardo Barbieri in the course of the trial, who informed the jury that {the teenager} comes from a household with a historical past of psychological sickness.
Barbieri stated his ex-wife, Chism’s grandmother, had many psychological well being episodes and that considered one of his daughters was handled at a psychiatric hospital. The protection group additionally questioned considered one of Chism’s classmates, who informed the jury {the teenager} immediately turned “very quiet” and “modified fully” within the days main as much as Ritzer’s killing.
A choose, nonetheless, refused to listen to the opinions of a psychiatrist. In the meantime, the prosecution maintained Chism knew proper from incorrect on the time of the killing.
“He’s pure evil and might by no means be rehabilitated,” the sufferer’s mom, Peggy Ritzer, informed the court docket in the course of the trial, based on The Salem News.
Ultimately, Chism was discovered responsible of raping and murdering his math trainer and convicted to life in jail with the potential for parole after 40 years behind bars, PEOPLE beforehand reported.
Ken Yuszkus/The Salem Information/AP
An Eerily Related Assault
Earlier in 2024, Chism pleaded responsible to a really related assault he dedicated lower than a yr after he was taken into custody, based on NBC Boston.
Chism, who’s now 25, pleaded responsible to costs together with tried homicide, assault and battery with a harmful weapon and kidnapping after a Massachusetts Division of Youth Companies employee accused him of attacking her in June 2014 in an identical method to the way in which he attacked Ritzer the October prior. The 29-year-old employee stated Chism adopted her into a rest room and pinned her towards a wall whereas making an attempt to strangle her and assault her with a pencil, based on NBC Boston.
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“I keep in mind being unable to depart my bed room for hours for worry that he’d be ready for me, able to kill me,” the sufferer wrote in a press release learn aloud in court docket. “True monsters exist on the earth. Philip Chism is a monster, a assassin.”
Chism was sentenced to 17-to-20 extra years in jail because of the second assault, NBC Boston, CBS News, and MassLive.com reported.
