The New Jersey father convicted of beating his 6-year-old son to death one day after the boy's mother lost her bid for emergency custody was sentenced in court on Friday.
Christopher Gregor was sentenced to 25 years for the death of his son Corey Micciollo, who passed away all alone in a hospital bed on April 2, 202,1 after being abandoned at a local hospital by his father. He received 20 years for the charge ofaggravated manslaughter and five years for the charge ofendangering the welfare of a child, which the judge said would run consecutively.
An autopsy determined that Corey's cause of death was blunt force injuries, including blunt force trauma with cardiac and liver contusions with acute inflammation and sepsis. A second autopsy done almost one year later found the manner of death to be homicide.
A jury convicted Gregor ofaggravated manslaughter andendangering the welfare of a child back in May while finding him not guilty of second-degree murder .Those convictions stem from two incidents involving Gregor and his son.
During his address to the court in Friday, Gregor continued to deny that he fatally beat his son on the day of his death.
Gregor's attorney, Mario Gallucci, announced soon that same day that his client would be appealing that verdict.
The jury convicted Gregor of endangering the welfare of a child after prosecutors played surveillance video from the gym inside his apartment complex taken two weeks before his son's death on March 20, 2021. In the video, Gregor can be seen forcing Corey to run at full speed on a treadmill and then repeatedly picking the boy up and forcing him back on the machine each time he falls. At one point in the video, Gregor also appears to be biting his son on the head.
After learning about this incident, Corey's mother, Bre Micciolo, petitioned the court for emergency custody of her son. A judge denied that bid on April 1, 2001, writingin his ruling that the court "does not find that ... Corey is in danger of imminent and irreparable harm. Therefore, the Court does not find a temporary modification of the parties' custody and parenting time arrangement appropriate at this time."
The following day, Bre dropped Corey off at Gregor's home.
It was the last time she would ever see her son alive.
It is unclear what transpired in the hours after Bre dropped off Corey, and prosecutors did not present any possible scenarios to jurors during the trial. They were able however to detail the injuries the boy suffered that daythanks to Bre, who took Corey to see both a doctor and a specialist on April 1 at the suggestion of the judge who denied her bid. The examinations and tests performed on Corey by doctors that day provided evidence that the boy's fatal injuries were not suffered until he was in his father's custody.
Prosecutors were able to show Gregor dropping Corey off at the hospital and then abandoning his son to flee the state. In a cruel twist, he also allegedly informed Bre that her son was in the hospital but did not tell her which hospital, Bre told Inside Edition Digital.
Corey Micciollo Abuse Allegations
In the wake of her son's death, Bre also filed a wrongful death suit against the State of New Jersey, Department of Child Protection and Permanency (DCPP).
She alleges in her civil suit that her son Corey might still be alive had the agency and caseworkers "adequately, properly, and fully [investigated the] reports of abuse" she made concerning her son and his father.
She accuses the agency of "negligent, reckless, and demonstrated palpably unreasonable conduct" in the suit, and is seeking both wrongful death and survivor damages, having filed the suit on behalf of Corey's estate.
Inside Edition Digital obtained a copy of the suit, which was filed in Ocean County Superior Court.
"This lawsuit will not bring my son back, but it will hold DCPP accountable for him losing his life to a monster," Bre previously told Inside Edition Digital. "They had an obligation to protect my son, they didn’t do that. They are at fault for my son's death, as well as the person who physically murdered him."
Micciolo gave birth to Corey when she was 17 and Gregor was 22.
At the sentencing hearing on Friday, Micciolo's mother says that her daughter got pregnant after being sexually assaulted by Gregor, with whom she had never had a relationship.
Gregor's attorney, Mario F. Gallucci , previously responded to that claim in a statement to Inside Edition Digital."Unfortunately, Ms. Micciolo’s mother (Rebecca) has a very vivid imagination,"
Bre raised Corey on her own for the first five years of his short life until Gregor petitioned the court for joint custody.
That is when the abuse started, according to Micciolo.
It was after Corey's third visit with his father in September 2019 whenMicciolo says she first grew concerned about her son's safety.
Corey came homewith a "busted lip" and "swollen face," but neither he nor his father would say what happened, says Micciolo.
Micciolo says she took picturesof hisinjuries and submitted them along with the little information she could gather to DCPP.
From that point on, whenever Corey came home injured, Micciollo said she documented the injuries and reported them to DCPP.
She estimates that she made over 100 calls to DCPP in 18 months and filed multiple complaints alleging that Gregor had been beating their son.
"The more he got away with it, the worse the abuse got," Micciolo said. "And he was aware after the first time I reported it [in September 2019]."
"They made it seem to be I was bothering them," she says of the case workers.
Micciolo provided Inside Edition Digital with the emails she says she sent to the New Jersey Department of Child Protection and Permanency (DCPP)for close to a year before her son's death.
In April 2020, she wrote: "I talked to someone on Friday about my son being abused, and no one is continuing to investigate it. He’beenot abused once again, and I found out about it yesterday. Many reports are made and nothing has been done. It’s a bruise very similar to the one made in December by his father. My family documented the bruiseand my son said he was hit at his father's household. We fear that he needs medical attention because I was told he seemed like he was in pain and hadtrouble doing anything like running or moving too much. Is someone going to do something about this abuse or are we going to allow his father to continue to hurt him? I have pictures of injuries that began inSeptember which is when his father came intolife. Please get back to me. Thank you."
In other emailsMicciolo says she sent to DCPP that were reviewed by Inside Edition Digital,she both details her son's injuries and provides photographs thatshow Corey with bruises, scrapes,black eyesand what she identifies as a "bite mark" inone email from July 2020.
DCPP sent case workers to speak with Corey about the abuse claims while he was at his father's house, according to Micciolo, who says she voiced her concerns about that decision with DCPP.
"[H]e’s afraid of his father," Micciolo wrote in an email after one of those interviews.
In another instance, Micciolo said she picked up Corey from school after he spent the night at his father's and noticed injuries on his face. "When questioned, [Corey said] Gregor made him run on the treadmill because he is fat," the affidavit says. "Gregor made the child lose weight because he believed [Corey] was fat. Gregor frequently weighed [Corey] and would make him work out to lose weight."
Micciolo says she continued to send updates to the agency and report her son's injuries.The probable cause affidavit notes that seven reports were opened by DCPP into Micciolo's claims that Gregor had abused his son.
DCCP did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Christopher Gregor Prison Sentence
Gregor did not receive the maximum sentence for either charge. He faced up to 30 years in prison on the manslaughter charge and 10 years in prison on the endangerment charge.
His sentence will also be subject to the No Early Release Act, which requires those convicted of violent crimes in the state of New Jersey to serve 85% of their sentence before becoming eligible for parole.
Gallucci maintains that Greor had nothing to do with his son's death.
"Corey Micciolo died from complications from pneumonia. Our expert and even the Ocean County Medical Examiner agreed on this early diagnosis. While it is a tragedy it is not a homicide," Gallucci told Inside Edition Digital in an interview last year. "My client completely denies all the allegations and is looking forward to a trial in a courtroom and not a trial by social media, as the Micciolos have been so diligently attempting to do.”
Gregor did not take the stand in his defense at trial and lost a crucial character witness when prosecutors learned he had been coaching his mother on her testimony from his jail cell. The defense then opted not to call her as a witness. No reason was given, but had she taken the stand prosecutors would have been able to enter the transcript of that jail phone call between mother and son into evidence.
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