The man who abused her got probation. She and her boyfriend are facing prison

Robert Noce Jr. was asleep when his ex-girlfriend’s daughter and her boyfriend slipped into his mobile home just before dawn on the Fourth of July in 2015.

Noce, 47, had pleaded no contest 13 days earlier to sexually abusing Brittany Monk, 20, while helping raise her as a child, reported WBRZ. He was sentenced to five years probation.

Monk told a jury Tuesday that she and Jace Crehan, 23, woke Noce in his Zachary, Louisiana, mobile home, then choked and beat him, the station reported. Crehan stabbed Noce five to six times as Monk dry-heaved in the mobile home’s bathroom and he later stuffed Noce’s body in a 55-gallon drum, Monk testified.

Monk earlier pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the case and faces up to 40 years in prison, WBRZ reported. Crehan, convicted Thursday of second-degree murder, faces life in prison.

Crehan, who did not testify, told detectives on a video played at the trial that he felt no remorse for the slaying, according to The Baton Rouge Advocate.

“I made her life better by what I did,” Crehan said of Monk. “That’s enough for me.”

He told investigators that Noce screamed when Crehan and Monk, who was 17 and seven months pregnant with Crehan’s child at the time, woke him after breaking into his mobile home, reported the newspaper.

“He was staring his actual penalty in the face,” Crehan said on video. “He knew exactly why.”

Prosecutors called Noce’s slaying “vigilante justice” in closing arguments Thursday, reported The Baton Rouge Advocate, but defense attorneys portrayed it as a Shakespearean tragedy in the vein of “Romeo and Juliet.”

Crehan and Monk will be sentenced in January.

This story was originally published December 15, 2017 at 9:43 AM with the headline "The man who abused her got probation. She and her boyfriend are facing prison."