SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A New York man has pleaded guilty to killing his toddler daughter with a wooden baseball bat before burning her body and dumping her remains in an upstate waterway.
Twenty-five-year-old Ryan Lawrence pleaded guilty Thursday to first-degree murder in a plea deal with Onondaga County prosecutors.
Lawrence admitted beating to death his 21-month-old daughter Maddox outside Syracuse in February. Authorities say he burned the girl’s body in a fire pit, then tied the remains to a cinder block that he dumped in Onondaga Creek in Syracuse.
The child’s body was found by police divers about 36 hours after an Amber Alert was issued for the missing child.
Prosecutors say the baby’s family agreed to the plea deal.
Lawrence will be sentenced next month to 25 years to life in prison.
“Without going into too much detail, [Ryan Lawrence’s] statements allude to almost a sense of jealousy about the attention that this child was getting, as opposed to the attention that he was getting,” Bill Fitzpatrick, Onondaga county district attorney, told CBS5.
Epoch Times contributed to this report.
