Man Is Convicted in Child’s Smothering

A man was convicted of murder Wednesday for smothering his girlfriend’s 6-year-old son and stuffing the boy’s body in an oven.

Kenneth Pierott, 28, faces as many as 99 years in prison for the April 2004 crime. He showed no emotion as the verdict was read.

Testimony in the sentencing phase of the trial begins today. Prosecutors did not say what type of punishment they would seek.

“We’re just happy to know it was a guilty verdict,” the boy’s mother, Kathy Odoms, said as she left the courthouse.

Pierott’s mother, Urestine Pierott, said she was “going to stick by my son.”

“I know he’s mentally disturbed and I’m going to keep on praying for him,” she said.

Jurors deliberated for less than four hours before rejecting the defense’s argument that Pierott was mentally ill and didn’t know smothering the child was wrong.

The defense had presented evidence in the two-day trial that Pierott sometimes thought he was God and believed others could read his mind.

Pierott was earlier found not guilty by reason of insanity in the 1996 fatal beating of his sister, who had cerebral palsy. Stephanie Pierott, 25, weighed only 43 pounds when Pierott beat her so severely that he displaced her eyeballs and crushed her skull. He spent about four months in a state mental hospital in 1998 before he was released.