The father of three dead children hidden by their mother in a closet in a trash-filled, bug-infested home in Blackstone agreed to a plea deal Tuein which he will avoid state prison but still has about 2 years to serve in the county jail.
Ramon Rivera, 42, was sentenced by Judge Janet Kenton-Walker to 4½ years and 1 day in prison, with credit for time served since December 2014, on one count of assault and battery on a child with substantial injury; 2½ years in the Worcester County House of Correction, with credit for 136 days served, on two counts of reckless endangerment of a child; and 3 years probation for animal cruelty and possession of marijuana.
Rivera has been in jail since December 2014 when he was indicted on the charges by a Worcester County grand jury. He was arrested after the dead children and squalid conditions were found in August 2014 in the house that he and the children’s mother, Erika L. Murray, lived in.
Murray, 36, was convicted in July of child neglect and animal cruelty charges, and sentenced to 6 to 8 years in prison, with 5 years probation to follow. She was acquitted of two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of the infants.