A Massachusetts man was sentenced to life in prison for killing his girlfriend in front of her children

Thadius McGrath admitted he killed his girlfriend by beating and strangling her in the Northampton Township apartment they shared. In a phone call to his father from jail, he said he believed he was guilty of first-degree murder.

On Tuesday, Bucks County Court Judge Wallace H. Bateman agreed, finding McGrath guilty of that charge and sentencing him to life in prison in the death of Samantha Rementer.

McGrath, 37, had told prosecutors he killed Rementer in front of her two daughters in June 2022, and pleaded guilty to the crime. But he and his attorney, Keith Williams, insisted that the killing was not premeditated — a requirement for a first-degree murder conviction — triggering a two-day evidentiary hearing that left the degree of his guilt up to the judge.

Assistant District Attorney Thomas Gannon presented evidence showing the grievous injuries that McGrath inflicted on Rementer as he beat her with a stepladder and floor lamp, then killed her by wrapping the lamp cord tightly around her neck.

As police pulled up to the apartment, summoned by a concerned call from McGrath’s mother, he shot himself in the head with a 9mm handgun. Rementer’s then-5-year-old daughter witnessed the fatal beating and McGrath’s attempted suicide and became a key witness in the case, describing both acts in detail to investigators.

Rementer had met McGrath in 2021, after her husband died from a heart condition, according to her family. McGrath was a friend of her late husband’s and had come down from Massachusetts for his funeral.

Afterward, the two grew close, began a romantic relationship and moved in together. McGrath killed her, prosecutors said, at the height of a heated argument, the full cause of which prosecutors say will forever be unclear.