Change of plea for suspect in Burrillville murder
By Alana Cerrone
acerrone@abc6.com
@Alana_Cerrone
In a change of plea Thursday, Michelle Morin pled no contest to 4 of 5 felony charges she’s facing in the death of Domingo Ortiz.
The court dismissed the murder charge against her.
Morin and Steven Pietrowicz were charged with brutally killing Ortiz in May of 2015.
Prosecutors say the pair met him in Worcester where he was from, then went with him to their home in Burrillville.
There, Pietrowicz and Ortiz started drinking and got into some type of dispute.
That’s when Pietrowicz and Morin beat Ortiz with a baseball bat, but he was still alive.
He was later strangled to death by Pietrowicz and another man, Corey Bickhardt.
Prosecutors say the two men buried Ortiz’s body underneath several inches of cement underneath the deck of that Burrillville home, where his body was found weeks later.
This afternoon in court in front of dozens of Ortiz’s family members Morin pled no contest to conspiracy, two counts of felony assault and failure to report a death.
The murder charge was then dismissed.
One of Ortiz’s daughters addressed the court, calling her father,who was 60 years old at the time of his death, a hard worker who was full of life.
He had 5 kids and 19 grandkids.
© WLNE-TV 2017
