LYNNE TUOHY
Associated Press
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A woman will stay behind bars for luring a University of New Hampshire student to her apartment as a sex offering to her domineering boyfriend then helping dispose of the body after he killed and raped her.
Parole was denied Thursday for Kathryn McDonough, 21, who is serving 1 1/2 to three years in prison for her role in the October 2012 murder of 19-year-old Elizabeth “Lizzi” Marriott of Westborough, Massachusetts. Her former boyfriend, Seth Mazzaglia, is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for strangling and raping the aspiring marine biologist.
“You got the deal of the century,” parole board chairwoman Donna Sytek told McDonough, noting that both sides in the case and a judge approved it. “We can’t substitute our judgment for theirs.”
The board said McDonough can apply again for parole once she takes some mental health classes at the prison and develops a better post-release plan that involves her living out-of-state. The board didn’t specify a time frame.
Marriott’s father, grandmother and uncle told the board about their lasting grief about her death and the circumstances that led to it.
Bob Marriott told the board his daughter’s death will be the defining moment of his life until he dies — replacing all the happy events that were on that list.
“We are not here to discuss the depravity of this woman and how it led to the death of my little girl,” he said. “We are here to talk about the impact of what she did.”
“While I want her to be in prison for a very long time, the deal was for 1 1/2 to three years,” Marriott said. “You need to decide if she qualifies for parole at the bottom of that range.”
McDonough, on video from the state women’s prison in Goffstown, appeared to weep into a tissue throughout the remarks, but board member Mark Furlone challenged her.
“I wish you were here in person,” Furlone said. “I don’t see any tears on your face.”
McDonough told the board she’d had a lot of time to think about “what a horrible, horrible thing it was. I allowed someone’s life to end.”
One board member called McDonough’s proposed plan to live with her father in the seacoast area where the crimes occurred “a bust.” Because of the high-profile trial and her notoriety, board members said McDonough would have difficulty finding a job or even walking the streets in the area where the crime occurred.
She testified at trial that Mazzaglia, now 32, was angry at her when she left him home for two nearly weeks without a sex partner and demanded she bring him another woman to join in their sexual escapades, which included bondage and discipline.
McDonough invited Marriott to the couple’s Dover apartment under the ruse of watching a movie. When Marriott twice rejected his sexual advances, Mazzaglia strangled her and raped her lifeless body. The couple dumped her body off Portsmouth’s Peirce Island. It has not been recovered.
McDonough told investigators for months that Marriott died during consensual rough sex between the two women.
Her parents, Peter and Denise McDonough, were stoic throughout the hearing and declined comment afterward.
Mazzaglia pleaded guilty last week to trying to escape from prison. A former cellmate has said Mazzaglia asked him to obtain a gun, two cars and disguises to use in a jailbreak planned for a date he was scheduled to be in court.
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