Jude Mellaci orders Morgan to life in prison for the murder of his daughter

(FREEHOLD) An Eatontown man convicted last month for the murder of his 2-year-old daughter Tierra Morgan-Glover, was sentenced on Wednesday to Life in prison without the possibility of parole, announced Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher J. Gramiccioni.

Arthur Morgan, 3rd, 29, with a last known address in Eatontown, was sentenced Wednesday by Monmouth County Superior Court Judge Anthony J. Mellaci, Jr., J.S.C., after a jury found him guilty in April of first degree Murder, second degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child and third degree Interference with Custody.

For the purposes of sentencing, Mellaci merged the Murder and Endangering the Welfare of a Child counts when he imposed the Life without parole prison term after the jury agreed with a Monmouth County grand jury that found an aggravating factor to exist – that the victim was less than 14 years old at the time she was killed. Mellaci also added a consecutive five-year prison sentence for the Interference with Custody count.

“The chapter is now closed on the heinous crimes committed by Arthur Morgan. He will never see the outside of our state’s prison walls. But the punishment just doesn’t seem to fit the severity of the crime. For the sake of Tierra, police officers like Christopher Matlosz, and others who are brutally and senselessly murdered there must be a death penalty. Or is it enough that Arthur Morgan will now be forced to relive the horrors of killing his own flesh and blood each and every day inside a prison cell,” said Monmouth County First Assistant Prosecutor Marc C. LeMieux.

Morgan was found guilty of murdering his 2-year-old daughter on evidence presented at trial as part of a joint investigation by the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office and other law enforcement agencies, after the young girl’s fully-clothed body was discovered by a group of teenagers, strapped into a car seat weighted down by a carjack, submerged in the stream below an overpass located on Schoolhouse Road in the Shark River Park section of Wall on Nov. 22, 2011.

“Our thanks and appreciation go out to the men and women of our Office, Ocean County Prosecutor’s
Office, Lakehurst Police Department, Wall Township Police Department, Ocean Township (Monmouth County) Police Department, U.S. Marshal’s Service, Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office and all the agencies who lent a hand in bringing this case together – they are all responsible for bringing this horrible case to a close,” Gramiccioni added.

The case was prosecuted by Monmouth County First Assistant Prosecutor Marc C. LeMieux and Monmouth County Assistant Prosecutor Jordan L. Williams. Morgan is represented by Jeffrey Coghlan, Esq. and Ryan Moriarty, Esq., both of Freehold.