NY man caught on video dumping pregnant girlfriend’s body on highway is sentenced for murder
A Long Island man who was caught on video dumping his pregnant girlfriend’s lifeless body on the side of an expressway in Queens was sentenced on Wednesday to 25 years to life in prison for the merciless killing.
Prosecutors asked that Goey Charles, 33, get the maximum sentence due to the “brutality of the crime” and his “remorseless discarding of the lifeless body of his girlfriend, the woman who was soon to be the mother of his child,” Queens District Attorney Melina Katz said in a release.
Charles was found guilty by a Queens jury in November of one count of second-degree murder in the October 2020 slaying of 29-year-old Vanessa Pierre.
Most of the evidence that resulted in Charles’ conviction came from disturbing surveillance footage showing him dragging Pierre’s lifeless body from a car and dumping her on the ground on Horace Harding Expressway in Bayside early on the morning of Oct. 23, 2020, prosecutors said.
The horrifying video clip was shared online in 2020 by then-NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison.
At first, Pierre could be seen in the footage moving around the backseat of her white 2019 Dodge Challenger, prosecutors said.
But about an hour later, Charles exits the vehicle, dragging her lifeless body behind him before abandoning her on the sidewalk, according to the footage.
Charles is shown getting back in the driver’s seat of the vehicle, which was registered in Pierre’s name before the video cuts off.
Pierre’s body was later discovered by an MTA bus driver — with a pair of gray sweatpants wrapped around her neck, the DA’s Office said.
She was wearing an orange shirt and red pajamas with a sock on one foot, police sources told The Post at the time.
An autopsy determined that she died from asphyxia due to compression of the neck.
Pierre, a nurse practitioner from Hempstead, Long Island was six months pregnant with Charles’ child, a girl, who would have been named Libby Egypt, her sister, Melissa Pierre, told the Post in 2020.
“She loved him and she wanted a family but I told her this man is not it,” Melissa said at the time.
“I kept telling her this man is not it. Something was just off about him. He was a pathological liar. They moved really fast, been together about a year, less than that. From what it looked like, it looked like he wasn’t really working.”
Pierre never got “into altercations with anybody” or even raised her voice, her sister said.
“She was very excited about the baby,” she added.
Charles, of Uniondale, was arrested three days after Pierre’s body was found and charged with second-degree murder.
