Victim’s bloody revenge
She made her childhood abuser pay a brutal price
Life got off to a grim start for little Brittany Monk.
She was just 4 years old when her mother walked out of the family home, leaving the child to be raised by her former partner Robert Noce.
Brittany should have been safe in their home in Zachary, Louisiana.
After all, Noce had a daughter, too – a playmate for her.
But it was the start of eight years of hell for little Brittany, as Noce began to sexually abuse her.
He even began paying her for his sordid pleasure – sometimes $100 (around £70) an hour.
It was only when she was 12 that the abuse ceased.
But eight years of mistreatment had done immeasurable damage.
And, five years on, Brittany found the courage to tell the police about her ordeal.
In June 2015, Noce pleaded ‘no contest’ to having molested Brittany Monk when she was a child – a plea that carries the same weight as a guilty plea in a criminal court.
Assuming Noce would face jail, Brittany hoped she could finally put the nightmare behind her.
She was 17, and seven months pregnant with her then 20-year-old boyfriend Jace Crehan’s baby.
Life could move on with her abuser behind bars. But it wasn’t to be...
The judge gave Noce, 47, a suspended 10-year term. He was put on probation for five years – then walked free from court.
By that point, three years had lapsed since Noce and Brittany had any contact.
But Brittany was still haunted by his actions, and disgusted with the seemingly lenient sentence for her eight years of hell.
Less than two weeks after Noce was sentenced, on 4 July 2015, Brittany and her now fiance Crehan, wanted revenge.
At around 1.30am, Crehan used a rusty screwdriver to remove a window air-conditioning unit from the secluded trailer where Noce was living.
The couple crept through the window, where they found him asleep in bed.
Wrestling him to the ground, Crehan shoved Noce into a choke hold. Noce kicked and screamed, while Monk threw punches at her abuser’s face and sprayed cologne in his eyes.
‘You ruined my life!’ she screamed at Noce.
‘You got the wrong guy!’ Noce begged.
Crehan asked Monk to bring him a knife – the biggest she could find – from the kitchen.
Handing her partner the knife, she walked into the bathroom, away from the chaos.
She could hear Crehan repeatedly stabbing Noce.
As she returned to witness the carnage, blood was squirting from Noce’s neck.
He was making gurgling noises.
But Crehan wasn’t done yet.
‘Get me something to tie him up,’ he ordered Monk.
She returned with a belt and ties.
Placing a belt around Noce’s neck, Crehan put one foot on Noce’s back and pulled the belt upward for a minute.
As the room fell silent, it was clear that Noce was now dead.
The duo then placed his bloodied corpse inside a 55-gallon plastic container Noce had used to make wine.
Trying desperately to cover their tracks, they scrubbed away at bloody footprints around the mobile home, using one of Noce’s towels.
Bundling the towels and the gloves Crehan had been wearing into the container, they blocked the kitchen and bathroom drains and ran the tap.
They hoped that, if they flooded the trailer, it would be the cover-up they needed
They crept through the window, and found him asleep in bed...
to get away with murder.
The couple only emerged two hours later, their clothes bloodied, their faces pale.
Crehan tossed a whitehandled knife into a lake and they went home to shower.
Then, keeping up appearances, they went to a family barbecue at Crehan’s grandparents.
Four days later, Noce’s body was discovered and Brittany Monk’s DNA was found in the trailer.
Both she and Jace Crehan were arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
In June 2016, Monk, who’d since had her baby, pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Crehan’s trial took place in December last year.
He said that he had ‘no regrets’ about killing Noce.
He felt the justice system had ‘failed’ his fiancee.
But the prosecutor said that it wasn’t for Crehan to seek revenge.
‘We do not live in a country where we, as a society, are allowed to take the law into our own hands and do justice,’ he said.
Monk spoke of her abuse and what’d happened on the night of her molester’s killing.
Standing in the dock in a green East Baton Rouge Parish Prison jumpsuit, her ankles shackled, she addressed the court.
She said it was Crehan’s idea to go to Noce’s house – to threaten him to stay away once the baby had arrived.
‘I agreed to everything,’ she admitted to the court.
She said she told Crehan that she wanted to go with him to Noce’s trailer.
‘I wanted to see him suffer,’ she added.
But she told the court they had no intention of killing Noce before they arrived.
They didn’t arm themselves with any weapons.
But, in court, it was revealed that Crehan had researched unsolved homicides on the Internet, just days before the killing.
‘Ms Monk may not have seen her abuser for three years, but she still lived each and every day with the effects of the sexual trauma inflicted on her for the better part of the decade,’ Monk’s lawyer argued.
But, despite what Noce had done to Monk, she had still been a part of his brutal killing.
Jace Crehan was found guilty of second-degree murder.
On 19 January, the State District Judge said the killing was a ‘diabolical’ act and ‘vigilante justice’.
After his closing statement, he sentenced Crehan to life in prison without parole. Monk was jailed for 35 years. Crehan’s father Layton Crehan said he and his wife will be legal guardians of the couple’s child for the foreseeable future.
Crehan claimed that he had no regrets, but it seems Monk felt differently…
‘Has killing Robert Noce that night made your life any better?’ the prosecutor asked her.
To which the young woman softly replied, ‘No, sir.’