The death of a 27-year-old developmentally disabled woman in a New Rochelle apartment 2 1/2 years ago was the culmination of a pattern of abuse by her intimate partner that echoed what she had done in relationships with two other women just without fatal results, a Westchester prosecutor said in opening statements at the partner’s murder trial.
“This is a case about control. power, manipulation, humiliation, fear and violence,” Assistant District Attorney Lana Hochheiser told jurors Wednesday, Feb. 25, adding that defendant Kenya Tilford’s monthslong physical and emotional abuse of Concetta Morton amounted to torture.
The case marks the first time Westchester prosecutors have brought a first-degree murder charge under the theory the victim was tortured.
Morton’s decomposing body was found Sept. 15, 2023, under a tarp in a bin at Tilford’s 3rd floor apartment at 155 Franklin Avenue. Police found it there after Tilford’s cousin reported seeing it after she had solicited his help getting rid of the body.
The cause of death was eventually determined to be asphyxiation and Hochheiser said that echoed instances when Tilford choked two other women during their relationships.
In a brief opening statement defense lawyer Rachel Filasto took aim at the finding, saying there was no physical evidence proving Morton was suffocated to death and that it took a second opinion and meeting with prosecutors to arrive at that conclusion.
She urged jurors not to allow troubling photos and testimony to “cloud their judgement”. She said whatever criminal cases they’ve followed in the past in newspapers, television shows, books and movies, this trial would likely test their fortitude.
“You have probably seen some extraordinary examples of crimes that have shocked the senses and staggered all reason,” she told them. “Looking back on all those experiences not one of them will surpass the case you are now considering.”
Tilford and Morton were in an intimate relationship when Morton went to live with Tilford at the end of May 2023. That month she twice left her home in Peekskill to return to her despite her family suspecting she was being mistreated. What followed, prosecutors allege, was months of abusive, controlling behavior by Tilford, and Morton’s family never saw her in person again.
Hochheiser said much evidence of Tilford’s “degradation, humiliation and threats” of Morton was found in pictures and videos she took on her phone. The last was on Sept. 8, 2023, a short video showing a disheveled Morton sitting in a chair, her lip bloodied, seemingly in an altered state, Hochheiser said. There was a black garbage bag around her shoulders, a piece of skin missing from her neck.
Morton is believed to have been killed as early as the next day. Evidence showed Tilford bought a chainsaw, face masks, a hooded coverall suit, bleach and ammonia at Home Depot and a Dollar Store. She allegedly urged one of the other victims in the case to come from Nevada to help her dispose of the body. She gave her conflicting accounts of how Morton died, suggesting she’d swallowed bleach to kill herself or had hit her head. When that woman refused, Tilford turned to a female cousin who also declined. She then reached out to the male cousin and suggested they meet to hang out.
When she brought him to the apartment, she warned him not to “freak out”, and told him she had put a bag over Morton’s head and choked her, Hochheiser said. He was overwhelmed by the stench and once he saw the body, he set up Tilford in a room at the Days Inn motel in Elmsford. He then went to Tarrytown police and reported what he’d seen.
New Rochelle police were notified and they too were overwhelmed by the stench when they discovered the body in the apartment, near a chainsaw in an open box. Morton was practically naked, wearing only a small pair of shorts. Her legs were tied with yellow rope and skin was hanging off her body. It was determined she weighed only 144 pounds – when relatives said she was closer to 200 pounds months earlier.
Tilford was arrested at the motel, where she claimed to have been visiting her mother in Virginia all week, a claim Hochheiser said would be disproven by video of her shopping at Home Depot, her footprints in the blood found at the apartment and Morton’s DNA in the blood found on the bottom of her shoes.
The arrest led some of the other victims to reach out to police while others were identified when a search warrant was executed on Tilford’s phone. One of the victims was the woman in Las Vegas who Tilford allegedly threatened to keep quiet about what had happened to Morton. Another was a neighbor who Tilford allegedly threatened in the days before Morton died and who is expected to testify about Tilford’s treatment of Morton.
Tilford also faces charges alleging she sexually abused two of the women during relationships and at times put her hands around their necks.
The defense effort to have the allegations involving the other four victims, particularly the two claiming to have been sexually abused, handled in a different trial from the murder case failed. Westchester Judge George Fufidio ruled that the prosecution would be able to present evidence that the other assaults provided possible motive and could help prove Morton’s death was not an accident.
“You are going to hear about a strikingly similar course of conduct, a pattern, a modus operandi if you will,” Hochheiser told the jury. “You are going to see how this defendant treated each of these women in a similar fashion.”
The cause of death will be the crux of the case as the defense will challenge how and when it was determined Morton died from asphyxiation.
A Westchester medical examiner initially could not pinpoint a cause of death or even that it was a homicide. The prosecution took what Filasto called the “unprecedented” step of bringing in an outside expert to conduct a second autopsy. The two then concurred that Morton was asphyxiated. But the defense will make much of the fact that the autopsy report was only finalized four months later, on the same day that three prosecutors attended a meeting at the Medical Examiner’s Office.
The first witness was Joanne Dunn, the executive director of the Youth Shelter of Westchester alternative to incarceration program, who was a cousin of Morton’s and eventually a guardian. She detailed learning of Morton’s relationship with Tilford when Morton twice left their home in Peekskill to return to Tilford despite their suspicions she was being mistreated.
Dunn said Morton, who the family called Cetta, was a “failure to thrive” baby, born addicted to narcotics, and required assistance for developmental disabilities the rest of her life. Around the time she was 1 year old her biological mother dropped her off for Dunn’s family to watch her and never returned, Dunn said.
Morton lived with the family from then on, including later when Dunn got married and had children of her own. She only once held a job, at a McDonald’s for less than two months.
Morton strove to have some normalcy in her life and the family tried to provide the “hurdle help” she needed for whatever independence she could manage.
One night in April 2023 Morton called her to say she was stranded in New Rochelle and needed a ride. Dunn arranged an Uber ride back to Peekskill.
The next day she saw Morton FaceTiming Tilford on the phone. She took the phone and told Tilford that leaving Morton stranded in the middle of the night was unacceptable. It was the first time the family learned Morton had a girlfriend.
Dunn recounted two times over the next month that Morton left home to return to Tilford. The second time she drove down to New Rochelle to try to find her because she had learned Morton called a relative in distress.
She couldn’t find her or reach her by phone. When she was almost back in Peekskill, Morton called her. When Dunn asked her to give their ‘safe’ word, she did and Dunn called a colleague in Mount Vernon who was closer to go pick her up.
When it was clear that Morton had suffered some injuries she would not report Tilford to police.
“Cetta was torn,” Dunn testified. “She feared Kenya but then she also loved Kenya. So then she was torn.”
On May 30, Dunn’s mother brought Morton to her Peekskill home. When she had to run an errand, she told Morton to stay put until she got back. When she returned, Morton was gone. She went back to New Rochelle.
Dunn still had Morton’s phone so over the following months any communication was on Tilford’s phone. Dunn said the conversations grew less engaging, with Tilford always with Morton. They frequently called New Rochelle police to do welfare checks, to “put eyes and ears” on Morton, though sometimes they were refused because Cetta was an adult. Dunn said the family never saw her in person again.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: New Rochelle murder case opens with accusations of torture, strangling
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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