“Mr. Kirch, you belong in prison,” Judge Robert Bauer told Columbus Elementary School Principal Elizabeth Gerling’s killer in Oneida County Court on Sept. 11.
Bauer then gave Jeremy Kirch, of Camden, an indeterminate sentence of 3-1/3-to-10-years that was part of a plea agreement. He also imposed a surcharge of $375.
Kirch, pleaded guilty on July 17 to second-degree manslaughter in the strangulation death of Gerling, 50, who was found dead in her bed in her Marcy home on Aug. 20, 2024. Kirch, Gerling’s boyfriend who was 45 at the time of her death, had also faced a second-degree murder charge.
Before pleading guilty in July, Kirch had acknowledged that he understood that, if the case went to trial, he might be sent to a psychiatric hospital for an unspecified amount of time or face a life sentence if found guilty. He preferred, he admitted, the definite sentence in the plea.
Rome police found Kirch wandering naked through the streets after Gerling’s death.
Victim impact statements
Before the sentencing, Gerling’s father, brother and son had given victim impact statements talking about everything their family and Gerling’s family at Columbus Elementary lost with her death.
“My daughter, Beth as she was known to us, was a special person,” Judge Stephen Gerling told the judge.
He described his daughter as the one who organized and cleaned up after every family special occasion. She was also the one he and his wife relied on for help as they entered their golden years: making doctor’s appointments, scheduling her mother’s hair appointments, buying airplane tickets, he said.
Whenever Gerling got perplexed or upset by something, his daughter would come through the door saying, “Calm down, Dad,” he recalled.
“And it usually worked,” he added.
Gerling also called his daughter the “heart and soul of Columbus Elementary School.”
But Kirch violently ended everything Elizabeth Gerling was while in an “allegedly self-induced drug stupor,” her father said.
Brian Gerling, of Manlius, Elizabeth’s brother, talked about the void Gerling’s death left in their extended family and in her school family. It became clear at her wake and funeral just how many lives his sister had touched when people waited in line for hours to pay their respects, he said.
His sister constantly offered financial help, emotional support, mentoring or a kind word, he said before recalling how his father had screamed, “No!” when the family saw his sister’s body.
And he described his nephew Noah, who will graduate from Cornell University in the spring, as “an intelligent, caring, strong, compassionate young man,” a testament to the single mother who had raised him.
“His best friend and mom is gone forever,” Brian Gerling added.
Gerling, who grew up in Whitesboro, had taught on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico for five years before returning to Utica in 2004 after her son’s birth. She taught English in the Utica schools before becoming assistant principal at Thomas R. Proctor High School and then taking the post of Coumbus principal in 2013.
Her son speaks
During his statement, Noah Gerling took a more vengeful tone than his grandfather and uncle, talking about the punishment that Kirch deserved and looking forward to everything he will likely suffer in prison.
“He is a killer,” Gerling said. “The Gerlings will never be the same.”
And the court process has been grueling, forcing the family to relive the murder over and over again every time they came to court, every time they saw Kirch, he said.
“There is no closure. There is no justice,” Gerling declared.
He expressed his hope that Kirch will spend the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison “so he can’t do this to another family ever again.”
Gerling addressed Kirch directly part way through his statement, looking up from his notes to look at Kirch, who kept his eyes fixed elsewhere. He said he didn’t expect someone like Kirch to do well in prison and described some of the torments he expects him to face.
“I will be waiting patiently,” he said, “for something awful to happen to you.”
“I am better than you,” Gerling said at the conclusion of his statement. “And my mom Elizabeth Ann Gerling was most certainly better than you.”
District attorney pushes for max time
District Attorney Todd Carville stated his belief that Kirch should be held in prison for all of his maximum sentence of 10 years and asked the judge to make it clear to DOC that it would be a “travesty” to let him serve less time in prison.
He also submitted Noah Gerling’s statement in writing and asked that it and 15 more written victim statements be forwarded to the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Services to be considered in any future parole hearings.
Carville also outlined some of Kirch’s history of mental illness. Kirch fell nearly 30 feet at work on a construction job in November, 2020, causing a traumatic brain injury, Carville said.
He spent time in a psychiatric hospital in 2021 and nurses had to intervene when Kirch began choking his mother during a psychotic break, Carville said.
Kirch then stopped taking his medication for bipolar disorder shortly before he met Gerling, Carville said. Gerling’s family has said that neither Kirch nor his family ever warned Gerling of his history of mental illness.
Then shortly before Gerling’s death, Kirch attended a Phish concert where he smoked marijuana, consumed marijuana edibles and took ¾ of a tab of LSD, Carville said.
Carville called these reckless and selfish choices that resulted in Gerling’s death.
The defense and Kirch
Defense attorney Michael Vavonese described Kirch as remorseful and “utterly devastated” by his actions.
“This is an immense tragedy for everyone involved,” he said.
But the combination of a traumatic brain injury, the discontinuation of his prescribed medications and Kirch’s use of substances at the concert does provide some explanation for the tragedy, he said.
Vavonese provided the judge with character reference letters on Kirch’s behalf, letters that show that the tragedy does not represent “the true essence of who Jeremy was before that night,” he said.
He quoted one of the letters: “He was a master craftsman at making others feel seen and valued.”
Vavonese also pointed out that his client has no criminal history and that every day he spends in prison will be a “challenging and harsh” punishment.
Kirch himself spoke, expressing his own remorse for his actions and for the pain he’s caused the Gerling family and his own family.
“I cannot think of sufficient words for conveying how sorry I am for ending the life of Elizabeth Gerling,” he said. “I truly loved her.”
‘Grave and unnecessary tragedy’
After listening to all these statements, Bauer declared, “This is an immense, grave and unnecessary tragedy.”
Given the quality of the person who died, her death is a great loss to the whole community, he said before giving his formal sentence.
At the beginning of the hearing, Bauer disclosed a potential conflict of interest of which he had not been aware earlier in the case. He had gone to junior high school with Brian Gerling and worked with him at a job for about six months more than 20 years ago, Bauer said. They did not socialize outside of work, but at the time, Bauer would have considered Gerling a friend, he said.
Bauer also said that he doesn’t believe the past relationship in any way affected his fairness or impartiality in this case. Both the prosecution and defense, who had previously been made aware of the situation, expressed any issue with Bauer continuing on in the case.
About the sentence
During his statement, Noah Gerling accused the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office of making mistakes — such as not reading Kirch his Miranda rights before he confessed, rendering his confession inadmissible — that allowed a plea bargain with too light a sentence.
But speaking out of court, Carville said that any actions of the sheriff’s office had little bearing on the plea bargain and sentence. They were the result of state laws and the psychiatrist reports submitted by the prosecution and defense, he said.
“It really came down to our ability to prove intent or not prove intent and the psychiatrists’ reports,” he said.
Carville declined to comment on whether justice has been served by the plea deal and sentence.
A future
Noah Gerling admitted during his statement to “pure hatred coursing through” him when he looked at Kirch, but said he won’t let it get the best of him because he doesn’t want to waste his mother’s efforts to raise him.
“I dedicate everything I have and eventually will accomplish to her,” he said. “She was my world …
“She will always be with me and I will lie my life the way she would have wanted me to.”
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Noah Gerling at sentencing for mother’s killer: ‘There is no closure, no justice’
Reporting by Amy Neff Roth, Utica Observer Dispatch / Observer-Dispatch
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