KILLER HAS NO WORDS OF REGRET
‘Nothing’ to say to Karina kin, but glad he’s made headlines
Chanel Lewis, the babyfaced man convicted of sexually assaulting and strangling a Queens woman during her daily jog through a desolate wetland park, still has hope for the future.
The 22-year-old, who never lived away from the East New York, Brooklyn, housing project he grew up in until his arrest, doesn’t like to talk about his case — or his victim, Karina Vetrano.
He was characteristically evasive during a Tuesday phone interview with the Daily News from his Rikers Island cell.
“We’re going to appeal the process,” he said, of his Monday murder conviction. “I’m going to let my lawyers handle that.”
The media conscious killer appeared to be proud of the coverage that he had garnered for his crime.
“I’m on the front page — of both papers,” he boasted. He tried to remember how many front pages were dedicated to the murder.
But the killer became reticent when it came time to talk about his crime.
“Nothing,“he said, when asked to react regarding the verdict or the victim.
He didn’t have anything to say to Vetrano’s family.
“I’m focused on my family,” he said. “They’re trying to hang in there.”
Lewis was found guilty of first- and second-degree murder and sexual abuse charges Monday. He’s facing life in prison when he’s sentenced April 17.
The day after his conviction, Karina Vetrano’s defiant parents lashed out at defense attorneys and others who have claimed Lewis didn’t receive a fair trial.
“No matter what anyone says, Chanel Lewis is the person who did this to my daughter. No question about it,“Cathy Vetrano said.
Lewis’ Legal Aid defense team argued Monday that Lewis “did not receive a fair trial” and that “exculpatory information” was reported, but never relayed to them.
The lawyers pointed to an anonymous letter alleging investigators did not reveal they initially suspected two “jacked up white guys from Howard Beach” of killing the 30-year-old. The letter also claimed investigators took DNA swabs from more than 360 black men over the course of their probe.
But none of that swayed Cathy Vetrano — or the jury.
“I sat for two and a half years listening to the most disgusting details of my daughter, her most horrendous death and last moments of her life at the hands of a savage demon,” she said. “It has nothing to do with what color he is or who he is. Can anyone say that the color or face or the person who brutally murdered and abused and beat their child, would care less what that person looked like? If you do, then I feel sorry for your evil spirit.”
Karina Vetrano had gone jogging three years ago near Spring Creek Park where she was beaten and and strangled to death. In the hours afterward, police, her neighbors and her family frantically searched for her. It was her father Philip Vebody. trano who found her lifeless
“He is definitely going to get what he deserves,” the distraught dad said Tuesday. “Sometime down the road, he’s going to meet up with Karina again, and this time, he’s not going to bushwhack her, and this time, she’s going to have Gabriel on one side and Michael on the other and on his way down, she’s going to take care of him for good.”
Lewis, who graduated from the Martin de Porres School for developmentally delayed children, eventually emerged as a suspect. According to his videotaped confession to police, the young woman was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He was upset that a neighwas bor blaring loud music on Aug. 2, 2017 and, by his own confession, stormed off toward Spring Creek Park in Howard Beach.
It was in this murderous funk that he stumbled onto Vetrano, a vivacious, 30year-old St. John’s University-educated speech pathologist. Lewis beat and strangled her during her evening jog before work.
“She didn’t do anything,” he recalled. “I was just mad at that time. I beat her to let my emotions out. I didn’t really mean to hurt her. It just happened.”
His first trial ended in a hung jury in November. The second verdict, which Lewis’ lawyers vowed to appeal, ended with the guilty verdict the Vetrano family so desperately sought.
During his incarceration and before and after his first and second trials, Lewis called The News several times a week asking for news coverage on his deplorable jail conditions.
Meanwhile, Lewis’ mother Veta Lewis turned away reporters seeking her reaction to a verdict that could send her son to prison for the rest of his life.
“I don’t want to talk to anybody, not today,” she said.