KINGSTON, N.Y. — Convicted murderer Sarra Gilbert has lost an appeal of her 25 years to life sentence for the brutal stabbing of her mother in 2016.
In a 14-page ruling handed down Thursday, the state Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department, denied Gilbert’s appeal.
In August 2017, then-Ulster County Judge Donald Williams sentenced Gilbert, now 32, to 25 years to life in state prison — the maximum sentence allowed by law — for the July 23, 2016, stabbing death of her mother, Mari, 52.
Gilbert stabbed her mother with a 15-inch kitchen knife 227 times, beat her with a fire extinguisher, sprayed her with the foam from the extinguisher, stripped her and removed her jewelry.
In its decision, the court wrote, “We have no doubt that defendant suffers from a debilitating mental illness that blurs the lines of fiction and reality, and we are certainly sympathetic to the difficult life circumstances she has endured. The proof, however, reasonably supports the jury’s finding that, at the time of the killing, defendant had the substantial capacity to know and appreciate both the nature and consequences of her conduct and that such conduct was wrong.”
At Gilbert’s trial, the prosecution argued that Gilbert plotted the killing and carried it out because the older woman had Gilbert arrested months earlier for killing a puppy and had temporary custody of Gilbert’s young son. The defense portrayed Gilbert as acting out of delusions brought on by a lifetime of abuse and mental illness and a state mental health system that repeatedly let her down.
In ruling to uphold her conviction and sentence, the court said that Gilbert, “possessed more than a surface understanding that her conduct was wrong, including that she hid in the bathroom when police initially arrived at the scene, requested that her family be moved away, stated to detectives that she felt bad about her actions, agreed with detectives that stabbing the victim would still have been wrong even if the voices had ceased thereafter and received a positive score for malingering on the preliminary M-FAST test.”
At her sentencing Gilbert in 2017, Williams said, “I will never be able to put out of my mind the comments of [Gilbert’s] sister and [her] attorney, ‘if you’re afforded the opportunity, you will kill again.’”
He continued, “This court will not permit or contribute to that terrible situation happening again,” calling the sentence not an act of punishment, “but instead an overwhelming desire to protect other people by taking [Gilbert] off the streets for as long as I can.”
Mari Gilbert’s death was the second tragedy to befall the family in a span of about six years.
Shannan Gilbert — Mari’s daughter and Sarra’s older sister — vanished in May 2010 after fleeing the home of a sex client in Oak Beach on Long Island. The search for her led to the discovery of 11 sets of human remains over the span of a year: Gilbert’s and those of eight women, one man and a toddler. At least four of the women worked as prostitutes.
No suspects have been identified in any of the Long Island killings, although investigators believe a serial killer, and perhaps more than one, was responsible for most of the deaths.
