A 60-year-old woman has pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter in the deadly beating of her housemate with several household items, including a tape dispenser and shower curtain rod.
Mary Carbone pleaded guilty Monday, the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office said in a news release. She was originally charged with murder, but “legitimate proof issues” that came up in the investigation led to the charge being reduced to aggravated manslaughter, prosecutors said.
Police were called to a home on 6th Avenue in Manchester on Feb. 24, 2020, where they found the lifeless body of 55-year-old Frank Stochel, officials said. An autopsy later determined that he died by homicide.
Investigators later found that multiple items found at the house were used to commit the killing, including a wooden board, a heavy duty tape dispenser and a shower curtain rod. The injuries the victim suffered were also consistent with impact from those items, authorities said.
Carbone was arrested and charged with murder on March 4, 2020.
The shower curtain rod, which had bloody fingerprints on it, was hidden in a garbage bag in the backyard, according to an affidavit of probable cause obtained by NJ Advance Media. It was later determined that those fingerprints belonged to Carbone, detectives said in the court document.
When police were on the scene, Carbone said she didn’t know what happened to her housemate, stating that she discovered his body in the hallway when she was answering the door that day, court papers said.
Police records obtained in March 2020 said that numerous domestic violence incidents were reported at the home in the year before Stochel‘s death.
Carbone will be sentenced on Sept. 13. The state is recommending a 10-year sentence, prosecutors said.
Stories by Nicolas Fernandes
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Nicolas Fernandes may be reached at nfernandes@njadvancemedia.com.