A 33-year-old man from New York may spend the rest of his life behind bars for killing his 29-year-old pregnant girlfriend three months before she was expected to give birth, strangling her to death and then dumping her body on the side of the highway before fleeing the scene. Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder on Wednesday ordered Goey Charles to serve the maximum sentence of 25 years to life in a state correctional facility for the 2020 slaying of Vanessa Pierre, authorities announced.
A jury in Queens County earlier this month found Charles guilty on one count of second-degree murder for slaying Pierre, who was carrying his child at the time of the cold-blooded killing.
Screenshot from surveillance footage showing Charles dragging Pierre’s body out of her car and leaving it on the side of the highway (Queens County District Attorney’s Office), Charles Goey mugshot (NYPD), Vanessa Pierre (GoFundMe)
“We asked for the maximum sentence because of the brutality of the crime and the defendant’s remorseless discarding of the lifeless body of his girlfriend, the woman who was soon to be the mother of his child,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said in a statement following the sentencing hearing. “The sentence does not bring Vanessa back, but it achieves justice in her memory.”
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Charles was convicted primarily based on video surveillance footage that showed Pierre alive in her car while traveling with Charles less than an hour before he was caught on camera dragging her body out of the vehicle and abandoning her on the side of the road.
The DA’s office said that at about 2:50 a.m. on Oct. 23, 2020, the footage showed Charles driving a white Dodge Challenger registered in Pierre’s name to a location near 216-07 Horace Harding Expressway. Pierre can be seen riding in the front passenger seat of the car.
At about 3:30 a.m., the footage showed Charles pulling over to the side of the Horace Harding Expressway and stopping. He then got out of the car and started moving towards the backseat, where Pierre was sitting at the time.
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“At approximately 3:38 a.m., when a light inside the vehicle illuminated, Pierre could be seen moving around,” prosecutors wrote in the release. “At approximately 4:36 a.m., Charles exited the vehicle, dragged Pierre’s lifeless body out of the car and left her on the sidewalk. He got back in and drove away.”
At about 6 a.m., an MTA bus driver saw Pierre’s body lying on the ground on the side of the Horace Harding Expressway along with a pair of gray sweatpants which had been wrapped around her neck.
Emergency medical personnel responded to the scene, but it was already too late and Pierre was pronounced dead.
A subsequent autopsy determined that Pierre’s manner of death was a homicide and the cause of death was “asphyxia due to compression of the neck,” authorities said. DNA testing also confirmed that Charles was the father of Pierre’s unborn child.
Prior to her untimely death, Pierre was a nurse practitioner. Her family set up a GoFundMe following her death to raise money on behalf of her family.
Charles played basketball at Herkimer Community College in New York during the 2011-2012 season.
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