Man Facing Life in Prison for Murdering His Fiancee’s Admitted Molester After Court Refused to Jail Him

(ANTIMEDIA) Baton Rouge, LA — On Thursday, a Louisiana jury found a 23-year-old man guilty of murder in a 2015 incident where he killed a man who molested his then-fiancee when she was a child, according to the Advocate, a southern Louisiana daily paper.

The molester had pleaded “no contest” to the molestation charges in a state court days earlier. He was released with five years probation, a decision that prompted the young man to wage his attack.

Shortly after the July 4, 2015, murder, Jace Crehan confessed to brutally stabbing and strangling Robert Noce, 47, before stuffing his body in a 55-gallon container. Crehan initially admitted his actions to police but lied about his then-fiancée’s involvement in the crime. He claimed Brittany Monk, now 20, was not present when he killed Noce, but evidence later proved she accompanied him.

Further, earlier this year, Monk admitted her involvement, confessing to repeatedly punching her molester while Crehan held him in a headlock. She was seventeen years old and pregnant with Crehan’s child at the time of the murder.

Monk ultimately testified against Crehan and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. In exchange for her admission and testimony, she faces up to forty years in prison rather than life.

“I was lying about Brittany’s involvement because I don’t want anything to happen to her,” Crehan eventually confessed. He maintains that he has no regrets. “I made her life better by what I did,” he also said. “That’s enough for me.”

Monk, who was a child when Noce dated her mother for ten years (and whom she referred to as “daddy,” says Noce repeatedly molested her. Franz Borghardt, Crehan’s attorney, asserted in court that Noce turned her into a “sex slave,” even paying her for sex. A no contest plea, which Noce entered thirteen days before Crehan and Monk killed him, amounts to an admission of guilt but cannot be used against a defendant in civil court.

Testifying in Crehan’s case, Monk said she had believed Noce would serve ten years behind bars before he walked free.

Borghardt argued in the 19th Judicial Court that the murder was a crime of passion, bolstering Crehan’s claim that he did not initially intend to kill Noce, but rather, simply wanted to rough him up. Though he acknowledged they “concocted a very bad plan,” he said, “There was a loss of control. When they confronted ‘daddy’ it was just too much.”

“Revenge is an act of passion, and this is very much an act of passion,” Borghardt told the jury. “We don’t believe this is second-degree murder. We believe it’s something else.”

However, the jury found that the pair’s decision to buy latex gloves before heading to Noce’s trailer, as well as multiple lies Crehan told after the murder occurred were enough to find them both guilty. For example, in July, East Baton Rouge Parish Assistant District Attorney Darwin Miller asserted that Crehan’s claims that Monk believed Noce was still a threat to her were fabricated.

“They had a specific purpose. They had no legal reason to be at this trailer,” said prosecutor Eli Abad. “They were there to find Robby Noce. They were there to inflict pain of the worst kind.”

Crehan’s defense attempted to win everything from acquittal to a manslaughter charge, but he was eventually convicted of second-degree murder and will be sentenced in January.

“You don’t want people going out and taking justice into their own hands,” said District Attorney Hillar Moore III, who also asserted that the conviction was proof the criminal justice system worked (despite the fact that Noce, an admitted child molester, walked free with probation).

In a similar case in the 1980s, Gary Plauche killed his young son’s accused molester and ultimately avoided jail time. His son, Jody, attended Crehan’s trial, and though he didn’t condone his father murdering his attacker or Crehan’s actions, “he said he believes the 2½ years Crehan has spent behind bars, combined with a not guilty verdict, would amount to a ‘just resolution in my opinion,’” the Advocate reported before Crehan was convicted.

As Crehan said in recorded conversations with the authorities after he confessed to authorities in 2015:

“I feel a lot better. It’s not regret. Is it remorse? I’m not sorry for what I did.”

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