December 11, 2015
Tracy Klimek/AP
Clark Fredericks sits in State Superior Judge Thomas J. Critchley's courtroom in Newton, N.J.,Thursday, Dec.10, 2015, as he listens to his niece Kimberly Fredericks read a statement during his sentencing for his role in the 2012 stabbing death of Stillwater resident Dennis Pegg. Fredericks pleaded guilty to passion provocation manslaughter in the June 2012 death of Pegg. Fredericks claims Pegg molested him decades before the killing. He was sentenced to five years in New Jersey state prison.
A New Jersey man who pleaded guilty earlier this year to killing his alleged abuser following years of shame and outrage was sentenced in court Thursday to a minimum five-year prison term.
Clark Fredericks, 50, admitted in June that he stabbed his former Boy Scout leader, 68-year-old Dennis Pegg, 30 times on June 12, 2012, after watching the child sexual abuse trial for former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky unfold in Pennsylvania, People reports.
On the day of the stabbing, one of Fredericks' friends, Bob Reynolds, drove him over to Pegg's cottage in Stillwater and watched at the doorway while Fredericks killed him. At his plea, Fredericks described the attack in painstaking detail, according to the New Jersey Herald.
“I said over and over to him (Pegg) 'how does it feel raping little kids now?'” Fredericks said. “I also repeated 'it's not so fun raping little kids now, is it? At the end, I slit his throat.”
Judge Critchley ultimately served Fredericks the minimum sentence for one count of second-degree passion/provocation manslaughter. Credit will be given to Fredericks for the time he spent in prison at the Sussex County Jail since 2012, making him eligible for release on parole in approximately nine months – after he has served 85 percent of the five-year sentence.
Despite the temptation to "liberate Fredericks at this moment," Critchley noted a need for the court to deter. "He is not a criminal. "I am mindful of the fact that the man who is here being sentenced today did this because of what was done to him."
Reynolds is expected to go to trial in 2016 on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, burglary, leaving an injured victim, possession of a weapon for unlawful purpose, tampering with evidence, and two counts of hindering police apprehension of the crime by concealing or destroying evidence.
Family members of Pegg, a former county corrections officer, provided a statement read in court by Sussex County First Assistant Prosecutor Gregory Mueller. Though the family acknowledged wrongdoing by Pegg, who was also president of the Sussex County Historical Society, they objected to Fredericks taking the law into his own hands.
"You chose to savagely end his life with your unlawful action," Pegg's family said. "Ironically, you asked for justice only after you killed the person you say harmed you."
Shortly after Pegg was killed, Fredericks' mother, Joan, said that it took her son decades to open up about the abuse he suffered, according to NJ.com. Fredericks himself said that he did not come forward with the allegations as a younger man because Pegg was "a respected law enforcement officer." He explained that his "shell cracked" on the day of the murder when he saw Jerry Sandusky step out of a vehicle and realized Pegg would never be held accountable.
At his sentencing, Fredericks' niece asked for leniency from the court.
"He has lived in a mental and physical prison and suffered enough," said Kimberly Fredericks. "I can only imagine and dream the man he would have been if he had not endured this horrific abuse."
