Man cops plea in torture, murder of 3-year-old boy
WEST CHESTER » Gary Lee Fellenbaum III Friday pleaded guilty to the torture and murder of 3-yearold 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 closecropped, 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 at a press conference 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 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, have 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.