Inset: Kenneth Mortimer (Green Township Police Department). Background: Police respond to the scene where they say he stabbed his mother and father (Screenshot: WCPO).
An Ohio man has been sentenced for stabbing and killing his mother – and injuring his father – after she said he could not spend the night with them.
Kenneth Mortimer, 41, will serve at least the next 45 years in prison, a Hamilton County judge ruled on Friday, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported. Earlier in the same hearing, Mortimer pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, attempted murder, kidnapping, and felonious assault.
The condemned man was originally charged with aggravated murder in the death of his mother, Barbara Mortimer, 75. The stabbing attack occurred at about 4 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2024, at a home on the 3300 block of Palmhill Lane in Green Township.
Kenneth Mortimer had gotten into an argument with his mother “when she told him he could not stay the night in the family home,” an arrest affidavit reviewed by Law&Crime stated. Then, “[t]he argument became physical” when Barbara Mortimer urged her husband to call psychiatric services “due to [her son”s] erratic behavior,” the document alleges.
The defendant next went to the kitchen to get “the biggest knife he could find” and approached his parents, “who were seated on the couch, and began stabbing them,” authorities said. The mother managed to run away and out the front door, but was eventually “taken to the ground” by her son.
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“Barbara Mortimer was dragged back into the house by the defendant where he stabbed her multiple times,” the affidavit added, saying Kenneth Mortimer then drove away from the home.
When Green Township officers arrived at the scene, they found “a male victim standing and covered in blood and a female victim, also covered in blood but unresponsive on the floor,” the Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said in a press release.
Police were told that the person responsible was the victims’ son – and officers went on the lookout for Kenneth Mortimer. When Cincinnati police officers found him “a short time later,” his “clothing, as well as the inside of his vehicle, were covered in blood,” the press release added.
Kenneth Mortimer was subsequently detained. Once he was brought back to the jurisdiction where the crime was committed in Green Township, he “confessed to stabbing both of his parents,” according to the affidavit.
Barbara Mortimer died from her stab wounds. Her husband and Kenneth Mortimer’s father “suffered serious injuries” but the 75-year-old man survived, Law&Crime previously reported.
“It is absolutely horrifying to think of the depravity required to brutally attack both of your parents, killing one and nearly killing the other,” former Hamilton County Prosecutor Melissa Powers said in the press release. “Barbara and Thomas Mortimer were just trying to get their son the help he obviously needed, and he responded with unimaginable violence.”
“My heart breaks for the rest of the Mortimer family having to deal with this tragedy,” the prosecutors added.
The crime has indeed been difficult on the larger family, according to the Enquirer.
“It changed my sense of safety and trust in others,” Janet Stansbury, Barbara Mortimer’s sister, told the judge – saying the attack scarred the family.
Kenneth Mortimer was being held in jail under a $2 million cash bond, Cincinnati-based ABC affiliate WCPO reported.
