Inset: Christopher Alexander Mello (Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office). Background: The area in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, where Mello killed his wife (Google Maps).
A 43-year-old man in Pennsylvania will spend the remainder of his days behind bars for killing his wife following a “24-hour beating” that left her “entire body” covered in bruises and broken bones.
Lancaster County Judge David L. Ashworth on Thursday ordered Christopher Alexander Mello to serve life without parole in a state correctional facility for the 2021 slaying of 39-year-old Alexandria Reynolds, authorities announced. Ashworth handed down the sentence immediately after Mello pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder and confirmed he understood that such a plea meant he would “spend the rest of his life behind bars.”
According to a news release from the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office, the attack began inside the couple’s home in the 300 block of West High Street on Sept. 29, 2021, and lasted until the night of Sept. 30, 2021. The residence is about 65 miles west of Philadelphia.
During the legal proceedings, prosecutors described the attack in horrific detail, saying Mello “repeatedly punched and kicked” Reynolds inside the home. An eyewitness to the attack described it as a “24-hour beating,” Assistant District Attorney Fritz Haverstick, who prosecuted the case, told the court.
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The victim’s injuries included “over 100 bruises covering her entire body, numerous broken bones including her nose, orbital socket, jaw and neck, multiple damaged organs, and a severed artery in her brain.”
Prosecutors said Haverstick’s in-court description of what Reynolds endured at the hands of Mello left her parents sobbing in the gallery.
“It’s clear that she suffered a great deal,” Haverstick told the court, “and I hope he thinks about that for the rest of his life.”
Officers with the Elizabethtown Borough Police Department at about 7 p.m. on Sept. 30, 2021, responded to the couple’s home after Mello’s father called 911 and told the dispatcher that his son was “acting crazy,” before mentioning “something about the victim being dead,” according to a previous news release.
Upon arriving at the residence, first responders said they located Reynolds’ body inside a bathtub on the second floor. The walls of the bathroom were covered with smeared blood along with “multiple holes roughly the size of a human head.”
Police quickly identified Mello as the suspected assailant.
In an interview with detectives, Mello “admitted to engaging in a physical altercation with the victim including punching her about the head and face and kicking her while she was on the ground,” police said. He also confessed to brutalizing Reynolds the previous evening.
In handing down the mandatory life sentence, Ashworth emphasized the “horror” of Mello’s actions, lamenting that no sentence could undo what he had done.
“Though an attorney representing Mello told the court he was ‘remorseful,’ Mello himself declined an opportunity to address the court when Judge Ashworth gave him an opportunity to do so,” prosecutors said.
In addition to the life sentence, Mello was also ordered to pay $4,500 in restitution to the victim’s family.
