LIBERIAN WOMAN SENTENCED FOR PENIS-SEVERING DEATH OF HER STEP DAD
Saturday, November 7th 2009, 4:00 AM
Brigette Harris was photographed at Rikers Island, where she is awaiting sentencing.
A Queens judge Friday slapped
Brigitte Harris with the toughest sentence possible for killing and dismembering her father to avenge years of sexual abuse.
Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman sentenced Harris to five to 15 years for the suffocation slaying of
Eric Goodridge in her Rockaway apartment on July 28, 2007.
Harris admitted plotting to sever her father's penis with a scalpel by researching the case of Lorena and
John Bobbitt. She wanted to prevent Goodridge, 55, from returning to his native
Liberia with his granddaughters, she said. "I never intended to kill him, and I'm sorry for his family's loss," she told Cooperman.
Cooperman acknowledged the findings of mental health professionals who agreed Goodridge repeatedly sexually abused his daughter from age 3, but he cautioned against victims taking
the law into their own hands. "Sometimes the crime itself warrants punishment," Cooperman said. The judge also chided jurors for giving in to sympathies for Harris in reaching a second-degree manslaughter verdict that was
inconsistent with the facts. Four jurors attended Friday's sentencing and, in letters, urged
Cooperman to set Harris free so she could seek psychiatric care. Harris attorney
Arthur Aidala said were it not for the jury, Harris, 29, would probably be spending the rest of her life behind bars.
"They handcuffed the judge from committing an injustice," Aidala said. "Brigitte has shown no remorse," countered Harris' aunt,
Comfort Lawrence.
Monday, July 30th 2007, 4:00 AM
- 'Dark Angel' kills & mutilates her stepdad over sex abuse: probers
Brigitte Harris is the suspect in a brutal slay of Eric Goodridge in her Queens apartment.
A cop removes evidence yesterday from Brigitte Harris' apartment.
She lured her stepfather to a Queens apartment, then handcuffed, asphyxiated and sexually mutilated him - all to settle a horrific score from two decades ago, sources said. Cops investigating the twisted slaying of Eric Goodridge, 55, believe stepdaughter Brigitte Harris, 26, cut off his penis to exact revenge for alleged sex abuse when she was a girl, law enforcement officials said yesterday.
Harris, who called herself the Original Dark Angel and Lady Vengeance, left chilling notes in her Rockaways apartment accusing Goodridge of abuse and justifying her crime, sources said. "He wrecked my life," read one note found near her stepfather's body Saturday. "At first, I blamed myself. Now I know it's not my fault," another said.
"She planned this - it was premeditated," a law enforcement source said. "In her mind, it was justified vengeance."
Police recovered a bloody knife and caught up with Harris after she checked herself into a mental hospital and ranted incoherently about the slaying.
Goodridge, an emigrant from the West African nation of Liberia, had arrests for reckless endangerment in 1978 and menacing in 1982, but no details were available. Harris was born in 1981.
Police said Harris sent e-mails to Goodridge to lure him to her apartment. Then she handcuffed him to a chair, gagged him with duct tape and throttled him until he died, authorities said.
He was already dead when she cut off his penis, officials said, noting there would have been much more blood if he had been alive when it was severed.
"This is a homicide that had meaning and reason," said one source. "It is like a movie, let me tell you."
The cause of death was "homicidal violence, including gagging and neck compression," according to a medical examiner's spokeswoman. Goodridge lived in Staten Island when he was married to Harris' mom. He later married another woman, who died five years ago.
That woman's mother defended Goodridge yesterday as a decent dad to his other children, who are now orphaned. She acknowledged hearing rumors that Goodridge had abused Harris - but she didn't think it was true. "I would die if I could believe that," said his former mother-in-law. "He wouldn't pay child support, but I wouldn't believe that."
But a former brother-in-law said he had also heard of the sex abuse claims long before Goodridge's shocking death.
"It stands to reason if someone pulls a Lorena Bobbitt, there's a good reason," he said.
Harris has twice made criminal complaints against her stepsister Carleen Goodridge, once for grand larceny and once for assault.
Carleen Goodridge said she couldn't talk about the dark family secrets behind the slaying.
"It will all come out," she said outside her home in Staten Island.
Harris works for a private security company at Kennedy Airport and is not a government airport screener, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration said.
Eric GoodridgeEric Goodridge was buried in Rhode today at a private funeral service. fifteen people attended. By: Tina Gray on August 6, 2007 at 8:56 pm
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