ST. ALBANS – A Swanton man who pleaded guilty to helping his girlfriend bury and hide the body of the man she is accused of killing will serve at least three years in prison.
“There’s a human decency issue here,” Judge A. Gregory Rainville told 29-year-old Corey Cassani during a sentencing hearing Thursday in criminal court in St. Albans.
“Helping to throw away somebody’s body just violates every standard of human decency,” the judge added. “He was a human being.”
Rainville then sentenced Cassani to the maximum amount allowed under a plea deal, three to seven years in prison on a felony charge of being an accessory after the fact and three misdemeanor counts of violating the conditions of his release.
Cassani had earlier pleaded guilty to those offenses while other charges, including unauthorized burial or removal of a dead body and obstructing justice, were dismissed under the terms of a plea agreement he reached with prosecutors.
Prosecutors did not allege that Cassani played any role in the killing of 35-year-old Troy Ford, whose body was found in the woods in May 2018.
Instead, according to court records, Erika Guttilla, 32, and her mother Carmen Guttilla, 61, each face murder charges in Ford’s death.
Police affidavits filed in the case stated that Carmen and her daughter Erika Guttilla had decided that Ford “had to go” because of his allegedly abusive behavior toward Erika and the whole family, which he also allegedly supplied with heroin and crack cocaine.
Erika Guttilla told police she shot Ford, her ex-boyfriend, in the face as he slept in the family home in Highgate following a night of drinking, according to court filings.
Prosecutors say Carmen Guttilla later helped her daughter wrap up Ford’s body in a carpet and store it in a garbage container on the back porch of the family home for weeks, court records stated.
Cassani, along with Erika and Carmen Guttilla, together moved Ford’s body from the porch to an abandoned playground in the woods nearby, leaving it wrapped in a sheet and placing tree branches over it, police affidavits stated.
All three were arrested in May 2018 shortly after neighbors found the body during a walk in the woods. The fatal shooting, according to police, took place “several months prior.”
Cassani is the first of the three defendants to be sentenced. Both Carmen and Erika Guttilla have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them and the cases are proceeding to trial.
They both remain held without bail.
Cassani has served about a year and a half behind bars awaiting the resolution of his case, which means he has about another 18 months to serve before he will be eligible for release.
Raquel Ford of North Carolina, the sister of the late Troy Ford, told the judge during Thursday’s hearing that her brother taught her how to walk and how to ride a bike without training wheels.
“My brother was my big brother,” she added, calling him a “jokester” who loved kids and his family, though he had no children of his own.
“He always wanted to keep me focused on the prize,” Raquel Ford said.
She called for the judge to impose the maximum sentence of at least three years in prison as allowed under the plea for Cassani.
Raquel Ford also talked about her brother’s body being discarded in the woods.
“Who does that?” she asked. “Why was he treated like that?”
Cassani, standing at the defense table, told the judge he was sorry.
“I want to apologize for my actions,” Cassani said. “I realize that I made some bad decisions.”
He added, “I accept the consequences for that.”
Cassani’s parents, Nicholas and Brenda Cassani, testified on his behalf, saying that if released their son could live with them and work at the family business as an electrician.
Franklin County Deputy State’s Attorney John Lavoie, the prosecutor, urged the judge to impose the maximum sentence of three to seven years in prison under the plea deal for Cassani.
“Given the amount of credit that he has, your honor, we’re only asking that he remain incarcerated for about a year and a half,” Lavoie said. “Three to seven years, if anything, is on the lenient side.”
Lavoie said Cassani’s criminal record included aggravated assault, drug offenses, and violating release conditions. And even behind bars, Cassani continued to collect disciplinary write-ups, the prosecutor said.
While locked up in January, Lavoie added, Cassani suffered a drug overdose and had to be revived by Narcan, an overdose reversing drug.
Attorney Joshua Martin, Cassani’s lawyer, asked the judge to impose a sentence of six months to two years behind bars for his client.
“Corey is not a murderer,” Martin said, adding, “Everything that happened, the taking of a life and disposing of a body, that would have happened whether Corey Cassani was there or not.”
Rainville said he understood that Cassani was not charged in Ford’s death.
The judge did say, however, that he was considering Cassani’s past criminal record, from an assault to repeated violations of court orders.
“This is not a one-time thing,” Rainville said to Cassani. “I don’t see a lot of bright lights here in the future in terms of turning your behavior around.”
As a result, the judge said, “That cries out for punishment and also containment to keep you off the streets so you are not hurting people or assisting people who are.”
Raquel Ford, speaking after the hearing Thursday, thanked the judge for imposing the maximum sentence allowed under the plea deal.
“My brother wasn’t perfect, he wasn’t an angel,” she said. “But, what happened to him wasn’t right.”
