By Marley Seaman
Aaron Clark, 16, received the maximum sentence after pleading guilty to the Oct. 10 murder of his mother, Gail. Prosecutors said that an argument about his girlfriend's spending the previous night at the Clark house led to the young man's stabbing of his mother and eventually the cutting of her throat. Clark, who was charged as a juvenile because he committed the murder as a 15-year-old, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on May 19.
Had he been charged as an adult, the maximum sentence would have been 25 years to life.
Prosecutors said that following the dispute, Clark stabbed his mother several times in the chest with a kitchen knife while his girlfriend waited outside. With his mother lying wounded on the bedroom floor, prosecutors said Clark stole money from her safe and took the service weapon she carried in her job as a New York City Department of Corrections captain. He then brought his girlfriend inside. She asked him to call 911 to get help.
"He said no, and that [his mother would] be dead soon," said Robert Biancavilla, deputy chief of the Major Offenses Bureau for the Nassau County district attorney. "I think, given the nature of what he did, he deserved and should serve every day of the maximum. Mrs. Clark died a horrible, horrible death. He basically taunted her while she lay there begging for help."
After killing his mother, Clark then changed his clothes and left the house with his girlfriend, whom police did not identify. After buying bleach, gloves and plastic bags, he went to a Great Neck park and dug a shallow grave for his mother's body. As they returned to Baldwin, Clark's girlfriend begged him to let her go home, and he dropped her off at her house, where she called police. She has not been charged with a crime because prosecutors said she did not willingly help Clark.
When police officers reached the Clark residence, they found Aaron outside, driving his mother's SUV back into the driveway. Police said he had tried and failed to move his mother's body out of the house, and when they found him he was carrying her gun. He was arrested without incident and charged with three counts of second-degree murder - intentional murder, murder with depraved indifference, and felony murder - as well as two counts of first-degree robbery and one count each of third-degree criminal possession of a weapon and tampering with physical evidence. He pleaded guilty to the top charge.
"I think it's difficult for someone of that age to grasp the enormity of something like this," said Jeff Groder, who served as Clark's attorney. "I do think he was sorry for what he did. But no amount of sorrow is going to lessen the impact."
Comments about this story? MSeaman@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 282.
