Bronx, NY: Man who murdered his girlfriend gets life without parole

By KIRSTAN CONLEY
Last Updated: 5:35 PM, April 5, 2010
Posted: 5:34 PM, April 5, 2010
A self-described "monster" who murdered his 18-year-old girlfriend — holding her by the hair to make sure none of the eight bullets allegedly fired by his cousin missed — was sentenced by a Bronx judge today to life without parole for the heinous crime.

Carlos Cruz, 39, murdered Chelsea Frazier on April 13, 2008, after taking her for ice cream and promising to buy baby clothes for their son Alijah, who witnessed the horror from the back seat of the car.

"How powerful and righteous you must have felt holding my daughter by the hair so you could punish her," Frazier’s mother, Robin Snow, said before Cruz’s sentencing.

Cruz allegedly paid his cousin Devon Miller, 27, of the Bronx — who faces trial for the shooting next week — $700 to make it look like a robbery and then shoot the young woman who had just dumped him. Prosecutors said he even shouted to his accomplice, "You gotta shoot me too," to make it look like he was also a victim. He took one bullet in the leg in the set up at Barrett and Torry avenues in Castle Hill.

Frazier had fallen for Cruz four years earlier, when she was just 14.

"What was he doing with someone half his age in the first place?" the victim’s sister Corey Plouffe asked in court.

Frazier’s mother told The Post outside the court that she didn’t like Cruz from the start but didn’t realize he was nearly 40 years old until her teenage daughter gave birth to their child.

"Your daughter, unfortunately, is and was old enough to understand how evil you are .¤.¤. You’re going to hope she doesn’t fall prey to a child-molesting pervert two times her age who thinks that by getting her pregnant, he will own her."

Snow said Chelsea didn’t tell her parents about Cruz, who she met through a friend’s boyfriend, until she was 16. He said he was in his 20s and hid his balding head and aging face by wearing a baseball cap down over his eyes.

"I didn’t find out his real age until Chelsea gave birth to Alijah," Snow told The Post, adding that she didn’t like him anyway. "I knew he was trouble right away. He would be Mr. Personality in front of me, Mr. Jokester, but around the rest of the family, he was as quiet as a clam."

Bronx Criminal Court Judge Barbara Newman also slammed Cruz as she delivered his sentence. "You ended the life of a young woman with promise. You are an extremely dangerous and vicious person capable of the most heinous crimes."