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A Connecticut woman was sentenced to 50 years behind bars this week for soliciting her cousin and another man to kill her ex-husband — shooting him multiple times on the street, according to a new report.
Larise King, 36, was sentenced in the Fairfield County Courthouse in Bridgeport Wednesday for asking her cousin and another man to kill Dathan “Daedae” Gray — who she learned had started dating another woman shortly after their divorce, the Connecticut Post reported.
King was convicted in connection to the July 27, 2019, incident last month — the first criminal trial in the state since May 2020.
“This was a domestic violence murder,” Superior Court Judge Tracy Lee Dayton, a member of the three-judge panel that convicted King, said as she imposed the sentence. “In a domestic violence case often, someone has a vision or expectation of how the victim is supposed to act and that certainly seems like what was going on here. And when the victim did not act that way, she punished him. She wanted Mr. Gray dead and she solicited her cousin to make sure it happened.”
When asked by the judges if she had any comment, King replied, “I can’t explain what I’m going through,” and broke down in tears, according to the report.
“The whole situation is mind-boggling,” she said.
During King’s trial, Senior Assistant State’s Attorney David Applegate said King had just gotten into a confrontation on the street with Gray — and then called her cousin four times before convincing him to kill her ex-husband.
A short time later, the cousin and a friend picked up King in a white SUV and drove to the crime scene, the prosecutor said, according to the report. They parked about a block away before the two men, hiding their faces with their hoodies, killed Gray while King waited in the driver’s seat of the SUV, he said.
Gray’s loved ones became emotional during the hearing.
“Memories — don’t let people trip you up and say you have memories,” Tammy Pendergrass-Green said, according to the report. “I’d rather have my son.”
“You ruined your life,” she said, addressing King directly. “You ruined his life, you ruined all our lives.”
King has so far been the only one charged in the case.
“You continue to protect these other people who were involved, you will not bring any other perpetrators in, so you deserve [the maximum sentence],” Gray’s father, Dathan Gray Sr., said during the hearing.
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