WEST CHESTER — A man from northern Chester County who murdered his girlfriend in 2021 and captured the act on a home surveillance video he had set up out of jealousy was sentenced on Monday for the extremely terrible crime he committed.
Addressing the defendant, Leroy “Lee” Brahm III, in a packed Courtroom One at the Chester County Justice Center, Common Pleas Court Judge Alita Rovito stated that she was adding 18 to 40 years to the mandatory life in state prison without parole sentence for first-degree murder of 21-year-old Annabel Rose Meenan, for assaults he committed before the day she died.
“You have no chance here,” the judge informed Brahm as he sat silently at the defense table. “You show no sign of being able to be rehabilitated. Your actions were depraved and displayed extreme indifference to human life. I find you acted with physical and mental cruelty.
“Not giving you consecutive sentences would lessen the severity of the offenses,” she said.
The judge’s decision came after she recounted the facts of the case presented at the trial and listened to Meenan's family, friends, and co-workers talk about the impact of her loss.
Rovito also made it clear to Brahm how she perceived the images of him assaulting Meenan on the night she died, which were shown during the trial. The judge seemed offended by the callousness he displayed.
“On the night she died, you were like a caged animal,” she said. “And she died at some point, but what did you do? You rested. You didn’t care.” It took him hours to call for an ambulance.
Brahm, 33, of East Vincent, did not speak in his defense. Throughout most of the 90-minute proceeding, where speaker after speaker expressed their anger at him for killing Meenan, he sat slouched in his chair, occasionally staring at the ceiling.
His attorney, Scott McIntosh of Royersford, did not make a significant argument about what his client’s sentence should be, only stating that he hoped that Rovito would consider running the assault charges concurrently with the life punishment for murder.
“He can’t serve more than his natural life,” McIntosh said of his client.
The lead prosecutor in the case, Deputy District Attorney Kate Wright, referred to the murder as a “horrifically violent conclusion” to the life of a woman who was “a beacon in. The lives of her family, her friends and her co-workers.” She said a consecutive sentence to the life term he will serve would acknowledge the “independently violent incidents” that occurred before the final, fatal assault.
“There is nothing that will ever fill the huge gap that the defendant has torn in the fabric of their lives,” wrote Wright in her sentencing memo, in reference to the friends and family. “He must be held accountable for the extremely terrible crimes he has committed — not just for what he took but how he took it.”
Wright mentioned the severity of Meenan’s death when asking for a punishment of life in prison plus 20 to 40 years.
“Nothing could be more serious to Annabel than the end of her short life,” she wrote. “She hardly had the opportunity to discover her identity and aspirations before her life was violently taken from her.
“He destroyed her hopes, potential, and future through a jealous act,” she said. “Her final hours on earth were filled with pain, fear, and degradation.
Several people spoke to Rovito about the impact of Meenan’s death — her father, her sister, a cousin, a close friend, and a co-worker who witnessed her abuse but could not save her. Meenan’s mother, Jill Kristine Hunsberger, had the most powerful words.
In requesting the highest possible penalty for Brahm, she did not use his name in the letter read by Wright. Instead, she only referred to him by the number he was given at Chester County Prison after his arrest: Inmate 78179.
“Inmate 78179 has taken everything from me,” she wrote. “Inmate 78179 took my daughter. I will never speak his name. Inmate 78179 is without a soul, and without worth.
In February, a jury in the Common Pleas Court deliberated for just over an hour before finding Brahm guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated assault, and recklessly endangering another person. The jury had heard hours of testimony and watched multiple videos showing Brahm and Meenan at their small mobile home, including instances of his beatings and the fatal assaults.
In addition to the videos, the evidence against Brahm included text messages in which he accused Meenan of cheating on him, a phone message recorded during a beating in which she pleaded with him to stop, videos of them at a Phoenixville bar the night before the murder, testimony from people familiar with them and their tumultuous relationship, and medical and toxicological expert testimony.
Meenan, who had been in a relationship with Brahm since she was in high school, was repeatedly beaten over a few weeks in November and December 2021. This abuse was captured on three cameras that Brahm had installed in their Buttonwood Avenue mobile home.
The violence of the attacks was evident, with Brahm seen punching Meenan while she lay on their bed and jumping on her prone body in the living room. An autopsy revealed multiple bruises and blunt impact injuries to her head, face, and torso following her death.
The medical examiner, Dr. Gary Collins of Delaware, stated that Meenan died of cardiac arrest after consuming cocaine and alcohol. However, he concluded that the cardiac arrest was caused by the physical injuries she sustained during the assaults. The death was ruled a homicide by the Chester County Coroner’s Office under then-Coroner Dr. Christina VandePol.
Brahm was taken into custody after police and first responders were summoned to his home early in the morning on Dec. 4, 2021. When they arrived, they found Meenan with obvious injuries and unresponsive, with Brahm claiming that he found her face down on the living room floor after a night of drinking. He alleged that her injuries were the result of “rough sex.”
He was accused of assault at first, and later of murder when Chester County Detectives discovered the home's video system and watched him beating her on that day and previous days.
Brahm's attacks on Meenan stemmed from a sexual relationship they had with another person, a Tredyffrin resident named Kevin Walters. Brahm had helped set up the relationship, and the three had gone on an ocean cruise in late summer.
It was during that trip that Brahm started to suspect that Meenan was getting involved with Walters behind his back, which made him jealous. He began monitoring her movements, insisting on knowing her whereabouts, and in November 2021, he tracked her to his apartment in Wayne after she said she was going to visit a relative.
The beatings began after that.
Before sentencing, Rovito commended those who had spoken on Meenan's behalf for keeping her lively spirit.
“You can't fill the void in your hearts with any sentence,” she said as the gallery listened attentively. “There is no cure for your wounds. But the best way to honor her is to continue talking about her. Because when you talk about her, you bring her back to life.”
To reach staff writer Michael P. Rellahan, call 610-696-1544.
