A heartless husband who beat his wife to death with a crowbar at a Manhattan bus stop was sentenced Wednesday to 20-years-to-life behind bars — as his sobbing daughter told him she hopes he rots in prison.
“I hope you rot in prison. I hate you so much,” Elizabeth Aponte, who at the time of the murder was an NYPD transit officer, told her father Julio Aponte, 65, during his sentencing hearing in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Aponte had pleaded guilty this June to one count of second-degree murder for the sickening June 14, 2021, attack in which he repeatedly pummeled his wife Maria Kelly, 49, just before 7 a.m. in Washington Heights.
After the attack, Aponte fled on a motorcycle, leaving Kelly unconscious and lying on the ground, police sources said at the time.
He later called 911, admitted that he had killed his wife and was arrested minutes later inside a West Harlem parking garage at West 134th Street.
Kelly had been married to Aponte for 20 years, but one month before the murder she left him to go live with her mother, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Aponte’s daughter, glaring at her father as tears streamed down her face, told the court on Wednesday that the killer had taken “everything away from me” — and robbed her of years she could have spent with her beloved mother.
“You deserve the worst,” Elizabeth Aponte told her dad. “She deserves to be here. I miss her so much.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement that Kelly’s life was taken “too soon” and that he hoped the sentence brought her family some measure of closure.”
“Julio Aponte is facing significant accountability for this chilling and horrific attack,” Bragg said. “I hope that this sentence brings Ms. Kelly’s family, friends and loved ones a sense of relief, comfort and justice.”