Man pleads guilty to boy’s murder
Boyfriend gets life in prison for horrific torture killing of 3-year-old ‘Scotty’ McMillan
WEST CHESTER » Gary Lee Fellenbaum III pleaded guilty Friday to the torture and murder of 3-year-old Scott “Scotty” McMillan, a case that drew national attention for its horrific nature, and that remains burned into the public’s consciousness through the lasting photographic image of an innocent young victim.
Fellenbaum offered no statement or apology to the court or his victims, and remained largely unemotional during the 45-minute proceeding. Dressed in a blue shirt, gray slacks, his bushy beard long and his hair close-cropped, Fellenbaum said
only “yes,” or “no” to questions put to him about his decision to enter the plea.
By admitting his culpability and pleading guilty to charges of first-degree murder, Fellenbaum will escape the death penalty, which the Chester County District Attorney’s Office had sought since the time of McMillan’s death, but had agreed to withdraw. Fellenbaum’s capital murder trial was scheduled to begin in less than two weeks. He will instead spend the rest of his life in a state prison, according to the terms of the negotiated sentence of life without parole plus 10 to 20 years.
“If God is just, he will spend the rest of his life in hell for what he did,” said District Attorney Tom Hogan, who said at a press conference that his office had made the decision to take the death penalty out of the case in order to spare McMillan’s older brother, who witnessed the abuse and was a victim himself, from testifying in court.
“Gary Lee Fellenbaum’s life was spared because of a child,” Hogan said following the plea, noting the irony. “His life was spared because of one of the children he beat.”
The plea was negotiated over the past several days, said First Assistant District Attorney Michael Noone in presenting it to Chester County Common Pleas Judge William P. Mahon, who has overseen the case. He said Fellenbaum’s attorney, George Yacoubian Jr. of Radnor, approached him about accepting a plea earlier in the week. Noone said his office was firm in the discussions that only a plea to life in prison plus 10 years would be acceptable; other suggestions from Yacoubian were rejected, he said.
“I presented to him my belief that I was trying to save his life,” Yacoubian told Mahon in explaining the discussions the two had this week about entering a guilty plea rather than proceeding to trial. “The best course of action would be to take (a sentence of) life without parole if it were offered to him.”
Fellenbaum, 28, a Lancaster County native who lived in West Caln at the time of the murder, pleaded guilty to murder, aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit murder, and possession of an instrument of crime. The assault charge related to the abuse that Fellenbaum had inflicted on McMillan’s older brother, who was 6 years old at the time and who survived the ordeal.
Both Fellenbaum’s girlfriend Jillian Tait, Scotty’s mother, as well as his wife, who lived with the couple, had already pleaded guilty in the case.
McMillan died on Nov. 4, 2014, of multiple blunt force trauma brought on by weeks of beating and torture he suffered at the hands of Fellenbaum and his mother, Tait. The murder shocked people in and out of the county for its savage nature, and drew heartbreaking headlines around the world with an accompanying photograph of the red-headed tyke “Scotty” sitting on the lap of an Easter Bunny model. At the time, Hogan called the case “an American horror story.”
Beginning in October 2014, according to the allegations set forth in the case, Fellenbaum began physically abusing both of Tait’s sons. The abuse included punches and beatings, but also whipping with a crudely fashioned “cat o’nine tails,” and tying the boys to chairs or hanging them upside down by their feet.
First Assistant District Attorney Michael Noone, who headed the prosecution team with Deputy District Attorney Michelle Frei, said that at one point Fellenbaum had thrown McMillan and his brother into a wall of the mobile home where they lived, putting a hole in it. McMillan was beaten on top of the bruises that he had already suffered, and ultimately slipped into unconsciousness.
Fellenbaum’s beating of McMillan allegedly escalated to the point where the boy could not hold down his food. Angered, Fellenbaum allegedly punched him in the face so hard he fell out of his chair, and later punched him in the stomach. The boy began vomiting and later passed out.
The final day of his life, said Noone, McMillan “didn’t speak, walk, talk, or cry.”
Although Fellenbaum and Tait tried to revive him, they left him alone in a bedroom for several hours – going shopping and ordering pizza, then coming home to have sex — before finding him completely unresponsive.
After he was taken into custody, Fellenbaum gave a statement to police in which he admitted physically abusing both Scott McMillan and his older brother, who was 6 at the time. According to the criminal complaint filed against him, “Gary expressed remorse that his physical assaults caused another’s death.”
Tait, 33, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and related charges in April, agreeing to testify against Fellenbaum. Also pleading guilty in the case was Amber Fellenbaum, Fellenbaum’s wife, who lived in the mobile home where the murder took place. Nether have yet been sentenced.
As they were with Tait’s and Amber Fellenbaum’s pleas, the couple who have adopted McMillan’s older brother were consulted about the decision to let Fellenbaum escape the death penalty. Noone said they were “in complete support of our collective decision. We care first and foremost for (the brother’s) future.”
Noone read a note in court that was written by the brother sometime after his death, addressed to “Dear Scotty.”
“I am so sorry that you got killed by Gary,” it reads. “I was trying to protect you. I had good news and bad news. The good news is that Gary is in jail. The bad news is that you are in heaven and not with me. I had fun with you. I hope you have fun with God.”
In a letter written by McMillan’s aunt, the brother’s adoptive mother, Fellenbaum was called “a coward” who negatively affected the lives of multiple people besides his victims. “Only a coward hurts children,” the letter, which was read to Mahon by Noone, stated.
McMillan’s aunt wondered who was better off, the young boy who is now in heaven, but who has no chance to experience the joys of living, or the boy who survived but who had his innocence taken from him and who remains traumatized by the experience.
Of the older brother, whose name is being withheld by The Mercury, she said, “He’s afraid of dying in his sleep, of someone coming to kill him. He is 8 years old and wise beyond his years.”
“I know you do not care how many lives you changed,” McMillan’s aunt wrote. “But you did not break us; you brought closer together as a family.”
McMillan’s uncle, who sat with his wife in the courtroom for the 45-minute proceeding, expressed pride at the way the surviving child had grown up since the murder.
“(He) has never stopped smiling,” the man read from a letter he presented to Mahon but was addressed to Fellenbaum. “His smile is infectious. Today, (he) feels safe, and what it means to be loved, (He) is a survivor, and he stands strong while you stand weak.”
Fellenbaum showed no emotion while the letters were read, sitting to the side of the courtroom and occasionally adjusting his glasses. Asked by Mahon whether he wanted to address the court, he said simply, “No, your honor.”
Yacoubian, who left the courtroom immediately after Mahon ended the proceeding, declined comment.
At the press conference, West Caln Police Chief Curt Martinez, who was one of the first on the scene the night McMillan died, recalled how hard the discovery of his bruised and battered body was.
“It’s heart-wrenching to see a young child beaten to death by a monster,” Martinez said. “Rest in peace, Scotty.”