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Man Found Hiding With Wife's Dismembered Body Going To Prison For Child Porn
Police found child porn on Justin Rey's phone while investigating his wife Jessica's death.
A man accused of dismembering his wife has been sentenced to nine years in prison after police found child porn on his phone while investigating his spouse's death.
Justin Rey was sentenced for three felony counts of sexual exploitation of a child, misdemeanor counts of child endangerment, and contributing to a child's misconduct on June 28. He had been convicted of the crimes in January. The charges are not related to the abuses against his own children.
Rey had previously filed several motions for a mistrial, demanded a new judge, and ordered his legal representation replaced before deciding to represent himself, thus delaying the sentencing.
Rey was not physically present during the sentencing and instead watched the trial in a separate room after a judge had ordered him removed due to his frequent outbursts and interruptions.
“You all believe you’re gonna get away with it?” Rey had yelled to the courtroom before his removal, according to The Kansas City Star.
Rey had been arrested at a storage unit in Lenexa, Kansas, where police had found him with the remains of his wife, Jessica Monteiro Rey, in October 2017. Two of his six children were with him at the time.
Rey had handed over his phone to police believing that it contained evidence that would help him at trial. Instead, they discovered illicit images of naked teenagers.
Investigators believe that Rey had cut up his wife's body in a hotel bathtub, two days after taking photos of the corpse and his 2-year-old together. Surveillance video from the hotel depicts Rey leaving the facility with a large cooler, a stroller, and the toddler walking beside him.
Rey told police that his wife had killed herself and also that she had died as a result of complications during childbirth. After the autopsy, a coroner said they could not determine an official cause of death.
Rey claimed he had planned to take her body to Arizona for a Native American ceremony.
In conversations with the Associated Press, Rey explained that he did not call the police about his wife's death as they had "stolen our children before."
"What was I supposed to do? I wasn't going to leave mama behind," Rey told the AP.
Rey continued to justify his actions in a letter written to the AP dated June 23.
"My children had not been in any danger, I'm not a murderer, I never abandoned a corpse, never lived in a storage unit/facility, never looked up/screenshot child porn," he wrote. "I did dismember a dead corpse under religious views."
Rey also faces charges for the abandonment of a corpse and for the murder of Sean Ty Ferel, a Palm Springs, California, man.
Ferel had gone missing after taking a vacation with Rey in 2016. His body has not been found. The blood of Ferel has since been discovered in Rey's vehicle, along with credit cards and a phone Rey had stolen from Ferel, according to KESQ of Palm Springs, California.
Rey maintains that Ferel had died of natural causes and that he had burned the body in Arizona, in a religious ceremony similar to how he was planning on disposing of his wife.
