By Irish Echo Staff
Tyrone native and Queens resident, Gary McGurk, has pleaded guilty to the murder just over a year ago of his former girlfriend. McGurk, a student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, entered the guilty plea in a court appearance Thursday.
McGurk, 24, admitted to slamming Michelle Lee in the head with an hammer, stabbing her in the neck with a knife and burning her body with an iron," the Daily News reported.
He then posed her battered, naked body in an effort to throw off investigators.
"I positioned her on the bed," the News reported McGurk as telling Queens Supreme Court Judge Gregory Lasak. "I positioned a knife in her neck."
McGurk, according to investigators, had persuaded Lee, a criminologist who had worked for the NYPD, to part with thousands of dollars after he convinced her that he had cancer. It is believed that after she refused to give him any more money, McGurk flew into a rage.
McGurk reportedly showed little emotion in court as he described going to Lee's Sunnyside apartment (investigators believe the murder took place April 26) wrapping her head in plastic wrap and then striking her four times in the head with a hammer.
McGurk said he also tied her hands to the bedpost with her cell phone charger.
He left the apartment with the bloodied plastic wrap, the hammer and Lee's BlackBerry.
McGurk faces 29 to 37 years in jail. He will be sentenced next month.
