A 26-year-old New York City man inflicted dozens of stab wounds upon his deaf girlfriend before stuffing her lifeless body into a 55-gallon drum, prosecutors said Wednesday according to the New York Daily News
Bismark Lithgow, who is bipolar and also deaf, did not want his two-month relationship with 19-year-old Francis Pellerano to end. So he stabbed her 38 times in his bedroom where he lived at his grandmother's apartment in Manhattan, prosecutors said at his trial for the Feb. 2013 killing.
"This relationship was clearly going to end but he was going to be the one to decide how," Assistant District Attorney Ryan Hayward said according to the Daily News.
Lithgow then wrapped the body in a bed sheet and placed her inside the blue drum- which he allegedly bought the same day in an attempt to cover up the crime. He cleaned the apartment and sent Pellerano's best friend an email saying she went to her native Dominican Republic for eight months, Hayward said according to The New York Times.
"He essentially dug his own grave and created a mountain of evidence that he planned to kill Francis Pellerano," Heyward said. "This was all because he felt his girlfriend was flirting with other guys online, making him feel deeply betrayed."
The day after the Feb. 28 murder, Lithgow's grandmother drove him to St. Luke's-Roosevelt hospital where he was admitted on suicide watch, The NY Times reported. His grandmother and mother discovered the body inside the plastic barrel on March. 3.
Defense attorneys say Lithgow was extremely emotionally disturbed at the time of the alleged killing and that he should be charged with manslaughter. A childhood illness left him deaf and permanently brain damaged, The NY Times reported.
Lithgow faces up to life in prison if he is found guilty of murder.
