Murder victim’s mom confronts killer
Former monk-trainee pleads guilty, gets 30 years
”I am Shelly’s mother,” Beverly Lewis said to Mykhaylo Kofel, the former monk-trainee who murdered her daughter.
”I want you to know where she is now. She is in heaven,” she said Thursday, just minutes before Kofel pleaded guilty to murdering Michelle Lewis, 39, at Holy Cross Academy in West Kendall in 2001.
Lewis began to cry and her hands shook as she read from a letter she had written to Kofel. The pale, baby-faced 22-year-old defendant stared at the floor of a hushed Miami-Dade courtroom as Lewis continued.
”When you stabbed and beat her to death, God’s angels took her soul to heaven,” she said.
Lewis regained her composure. She wanted Kofel to know that his attack on her daughter, a nun-in-training, had been so vicious that morticians told her an open casket was impossible.
”I saw my daughter take her first breath. Your murder was so vile and so brutal I was not even able to see her to say goodbye,” said Lewis, who traveled to Miami from her home in western Pennsylvania to confront her daughter’s killer for the first time.
Kofel pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder and one charge of burglary with aggravated assault, bringing a measure of closure in one of Miami’s most sensational murder cases.
He will serve 30 years in state prison and then will be deported to his native Ukraine. He was originally charged with first-degree murder and could have faced the death penalty or life in prison if convicted.
`I AM REALLY SORRY’
When Kofel’s turn to speak came, he pulled a piece of notebook paper from his pocket and read a statement to Lewis’ family.
”I am really sorry,” he said in a thick Eastern European accent. “I want to take full responsibility for my actions. If I could, I would give my life for hers. Murder is wrong, no matter what.”
Prosecutors said they offered Kofel the plea deal because they believe his ”intolerable act” of murdering Lewis was mitigated by sexual abuse inflicted upon him by priests at the academy.
Kofel, who was 18 at the time of Lewis’ slaying, told investigators the day after the March 25, 2001 murder that the Rev. Abbott Gregory Wendt and the Rev. Damian Gibault — leaders of Holy Cross — repeatedly sexually abused him during the four years he lived at the academy, where he came to train as a monk in the Byzantine Catholic Church.
The priests, through their attorneys, deny they abused Kofel. No charges have been filed against them.
STATE BELIEVES HIM
Lead prosecutor Gail Levine said the state believes Kofel was abused at the school.
”During the investigation, we learned of sexual and physical abuse of this defendant,” Levine said during a statement after the court proceedings. “The intolerable acts of Mykhaylo Kofel had to be considered in light of the intolerable conditions he lived at Holy Cross.”
She said the investigation into the abuse allegations are continuing. Prosecutors said Wendt and Gibault are still in Miami, living on the grounds of the school, which closed last year because of dwindling enrollment.
ALLEGATIONS DENIED
Richard Hersch, Gibault’s attorney, called Levine’s statements outrageous. The abuse allegations, he said, have been investigated by police, prosecutors, the Department of Children & Families and immigration officers.
”They have found no evidence of sexual abuse and haven’t charged these men,” he said.
”They only evidence is out of the mouth of Kofel. This is a man who after he stabbed this lady 92 times, stomped her six times and bludgeoned her with a blunt object [and] took extensive steps to cover up the crime. I don’t find anything he says particularly credible,” he added.
Kofel’s lead attorney, assistant public defender Edith Georgi, said after the hearing that it ”would take centuries to explain the things that happened to Kofel” at the school that led him to attack Lewis.
”People who have wronged him should take responsibility for what they have done,” Georgi said.
Circuit Judge Manny Crespo told Kofel he had been given a ”very lenient sentence” in the court’s opinion. That “doesn’t take away the fact that the act remains intolerable.”
REQUEST REJECTED
Crespo turned down Lewis’ request that Kofel be required to spend every anniversary of the murder looking at the gruesome crime-scene photos.
He said he couldn’t order the state corrections department to do that.
He said Kofel would have the burden of the crime to carry for the rest of his life: “You did an act that can never be condoned or forgiven, and for that, may God have mercy on your soul.”