A 57-year-old Connecticut stepmother accused of keeping her stepson locked in a room for more than two decades rejected two plea deals Friday, according to court proceedings.
Kimberly Sullivan, 57, lived in Waterbury at the time of her arrest last year.
The defendant turned down prosecutors’ offers in court Friday, choosing to take her chances at trial.
Sullivan refused to cop to a slew of charges in exchange for a 30-year prison sentence, according to reports. One proposed deal allowed for release after 20 years, while a second offer suspended the sentence after just 10.
Under the rejected terms, the stepmother would have had to plead guilty to one count of kidnapping, assault, unlawful restraint and cruelty to persons, the New Haven Register reported.
Her defense attorney dismissed the plea proposals during negotiations in July.
“It’s a non-starter,” Sullivan’s attorney Ioannis Kaloidis said in July.
“I don’t anticipate the case resolving with anything that involves incarceration,” Kaloidis said.
The stepmother’s case is now expected to head to trial, court records show.
The judge theorized Friday that the “meat of the trial” will take place in January.
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Sullivan asked the court Friday to remove her electronic monitoring device, arguing she has made no attempts to flee since her arrest last year. The judge knocked down the request.
The defendant was arrested last March after her stepson set fire to the Waterbury home where she allegedly kept him bolted inside for decades.
Her stepson lit the house on fire in a desperate bid to escape the torture, according to reports.
He weighed just 68 pounds when he finally escaped the residence, officials said.
Sullivan allegedly locked the boy inside a room at the age of 10, investigators said.
She only let him out of the room for a few hours at a time so he could do chores around the home, prosecutors alleged.
Prosecutors likened the treatment of the now-33-year-old stepson to that of Holocaust victims.
State prosecutors described the alarmingly emaciated man, who spent much of his life in a state of near-starvation, as, “without exaggeration, akin to a survivor of Auschwitz’s death camp.”
Sullivan faces two first-degree kidnapping charges as well as first-degree assault, first-degree unlawful restraint and intentional cruelty to persons, court records show. Each kidnapping charge alone carries a maximum of 25 years in Connecticut.
Sullivan has denied abusing the man, who is now 33 years old, court records show. The defendant has denied ever locking her stepson in the room or starving him.
She has been free on a $300,000 bond since her arrest last March, with trial proceedings expected in January.
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