Maximum sentence ordered in stabbing

Kim Smith

Thursday, Jan. 17, 2002 | 9:26 a.m.

The stabbing death of Michelle Welch, 27, at first looked like a sad case of domestic violence.

But as court officials began unraveling the life of her murderer, 33-year-old Glenford Ennis, they began to suspect there was more to it.

Their conclusions led District Judge Nancy Saitta to give Ennis the maximum sentence Wednesday for Welch's death and other charges.

Ennis, 33, was convicted in October of stabbing Welch to death on March 30, 2001.

Prosecutors thought it was a case of domestic violence, but learned since the trial that Ennis may have killed Welch because he was afraid of being deported and she wouldn't marry him.

Chief Deputy District Attorney L.J. O'Neale said fingerprint records show Ennis is really a Jamaican named Dwight Whylie, a felon convicted in New York on drug and vehicle theft charges.

Whylie, records show, was deported to Jamaica in 1992 and re-entered the country after assuming a new name and marrying an American woman in Jamaica in 1997. They since divorced.

Ennis' past wasn't uncovered until recently because the Immigration and Naturalization Service didn't begin fingerprinting deportees until the mid- to late 1990s, O'Neale said.

Ennis was arrested and convicted in New York in the late 1980s.

Saitta minced no words while sentencing Ennis to two consecutive life terms Wednesday.

"As the mother of the woman whose life you took is talking about how this impacted her life, you don't even have enough sense to pretend that you're paying attention to what she's saying, to pretend that you care about what you've done to hurt her family," Saitta snapped. "You're looking around the courtroom to see who's coming and going and what's going on."

Ennis angered Saitta further by insisting he is not Whylie. He said he's never stepped foot in New York.

"You still think we're all so stupid that we don't believe there is this other individual whose fingerprints coincidentally match yours and whose picture coincidentally looks an awful lot like you," Saitta said.

"(I can't believe) you can still stand before us and say that's not you. "

Saitta gave Ennis two consecutive life terms for the murder and tacked on an additional 10 to 26 years for coercion and attempted murder for an earlier event involving Welch.