Sentence handed down in ’13 city murder
Warwick man gets life in prison for beating death of girlfriend at Rathbun Street apartment
WOONSOCKET — A Warwick man was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for beating his girlfriend to death with a 25-pound dumbbell in her Rathbun Street apartment in 2013.
Brian W. Audette, 49, was sentenced by Superior Court Justice Joseph A. Montalbano after pleading no contest to second-degree homicide in the death of Donna Pike, 57, of 79 Rathbun St.
Kristy dosReis, spokeswoman for Attorney General Peter Neronha, said that if the case had proceeded to trial, prosecutors would have proved that the cause of Pike’s death was blunt force trauma to the head, and that the wounds were inflicted by Audette striking her repeatedly with the dumbbell while she was lying in bed.
Audette had been released from a West Virginia prison just three months before the homicide, where he had been serving time in connection with 2000 robbery. He was on probation for that crime at time when he murdered Pike and was later sentenced to seven years as a violator following his arrest.
Shortly after the homicide, police said he confessed to beating Pike on April 7, 2013, after drinking a half a pint of vodka. A police report says he admitted that he left Pike in her
apartment bleeding, knowing that she would die without medical help.
Police said Audette had been in and out of prison since 1989 and friends of his told authorities that he was struggling to fit into society as an ex-con and that he wanted to go back to prison
Pike’s body was discovered after her landlord reported that he hadn’t seen or heard from her for several days. Her apartment was part of the former Lauzon Funeral Home property.
According to police reports, Audette was taken into custody from Kent County Hospital in Warwick three days after the crime. He has been held at the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston since.