A convicted sex offender who has admitted kidnapping and killing his 12-year-old niece has been sentenced to life without parole.
Forty-eight-year-old Michael Jacques was formally sentenced in federal court in Burlington Tuesday.
As the Rutland Herald reported Saturday:
In 2013, Michael Jacques of Randolph, then 47, pleaded guilty in federal court to a charge of kidnapping with death resulting for the 2008 abduction, sexual assault and killing of his 12-year-old niece, Brooke Bennett of Brookfield. In exchange for pleading guilty, Jacques was spared a possible death sentence. However, in a sentencing memorandum filed Friday in federal court, U.S. Attorney Tristram Coffin is looking for a sentence that would ensure Jacques never goes free. “For that unspeakable crime this Court should sentence Jacques to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and should impose a consecutive 70 years imprisonment for his production of child pornography involving a different young girl,” he wrote. Jacques has a history of sexually assaulting girls that dates back more than 30 years, Coffin said. In 1985, a pregnant 15-year-old who was seeking an abortion told police she was carrying Jacques’ child, and said he had been assaulting her since she was 10 or 11 years old.
Information from the Associated Press is included in this post.
