Manuela Morgado gets 20-year sentence for murdering toddler son, Jake Reish
The New York woman who suffocated her 4-year-old son during a botched murder suicide in 2012, has finally been sentenced.
Manuela Maria Morgado, who previously pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison, the Westchester County District Attorney’s office said. Morgado murdered her son, Jason “Jake” Reish, in her Mamaroneck condominium two years ago.
Jason “Jake” Reish
The woman was found next to Jake’s body, using helium and a pillow to suffocate him. Police have determined Manuela was attempting to “hurt” the boy’s father in the botched murder-suicide attempt. The couple fought over where the boy would attend school after they separated. Manuela had also threatened the boy’s father and his new wife.
“Your plea was the easy way out for you,” Jake’s dad Tim Reish said druing the hearing. “I wanted everyone to see the evil, subhuman creature that murdered my little boy.”
“This defendant methodically planned and carried out the murder of her four year old child, a child whose life was taken well before his time by the very person whose job it was to protect him. She will now spend the next 20 years in prison, and will have to live with her conscience for the rest of her life,” said District Attorney Janet DiFiore.
Tim’s wife, Erin Reish, also spoke at the sentencing.
“Although Jake was not my biological child, I loved him as if he were, and I miss him every day,” she said.
Timothy Reish, who rushed to the murder scene the day of the horror, explained that the tears still come too easily.
Manuela Morgado
“They are the tears shed by a father whose son was brutally taken from him by a sick, twisted , narcissistic monster who had no ability to parent a child, and who was incapable of putting her child’s needs above her own,” he said.
Timothy Reish said he now wishes he had gotten Jake away from her.
“In hindsight, I should’ve begun a custody battle, but ultimately who’s to say Jake’s fate would’ve been any different?” he said. “Perhaps the saddest part of this tragedy is the reason I did not begin custody proceedings, and that is because in all his innocence, Jake loved his mother, and I did not want to take that from him.”
Morgado’s attorney said she was clinically depressed at the time of the murder. Police said Morgado was semi-conscious even at the time she was first arrested, and may have tried to kill herself with a drug overdose.
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