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Michael Owens, age 30 of St. James, received his 25 years to life sentence for the murder of Kelly Owens on Thursday, Jan. 11, according to the Nassau County District Attorney.
Nearly four years before, on January 15, 2020, 27-year-old nursing student Kelly Owens was at her Farmingdale apartment on First Avenue, which was on a property she shared with her parents.
Her father had taken her 6-year-old child, with whom she and Michael shared custody, to school that morning.
When she did not show up for her afternoon shift as an aide at a local elementary school’s aftercare program, one of Kelly’s co-workers called her parents, who checked her apartment and found her body.
She was discovered to have been strangled with a "rope-like" object. Investigators also determined that she had been in the early stages of pregnancy with Michael’s child.
Video surveillance at about 9:30 a.m. morning showed Michael, who worked as a cell site technician, parking his car in Kelly’s neighborhood, two blocks away from her apartment. According to the DA’s Office, he turned off his phone before he got into Farmingdale so that it could not be tracked.
Additionally, he was reported to have deleted texts off of both his and Kelly’s phones after his murder.
His DNA was found around Kelly’s neck and he was arrested nearly two weeks later.
“Kelly was a young mother and pregnant with Owen’s child at the time of her brutal murder. She worked with children and had dreams of becoming a nurse. Michael Owen stole those dreams, and now he will pay for his crimes in prison,” said DA Anne T. Donnelly.
In July 2023, Michael was convicted by a jury of second-degree murder.
He received the maximum sentence.
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