As part of a plea deal, Anthony Kidd, 41, agreed to a 29-year sentence.
Anthony Kidd As part of a plea deal, Anthony Kidd, 41, agreed to a 29-year sentence, to be served after he finishes the 20 years remaining on his current sentence for attempted murder of a police officer.
“He will be 86 years old before he’s even eligible for parole,” Mercer County Assistant Prosecutor Lew Korngut said after the hearing yesterday. “This sentence ensures he won’t see the light of day.”
Three members of murder victim Kendra DeGrasse’s family wept as Kidd confessed to arranging her murder. Her mother and sister left the room midway through his questioning by prosecutors.
Kidd, a Bloods gang member, has been behind bars for more than 10 years on drug and attempted murder charges. While in prison in 2005, he used a contraband cell phone to call his cousin Darrell Scott in Alabama. He said he ordered Scott to kill DeGrasse in retaliation for testifying against him.
“I contacted my cousin and told him I needed him to kill somebody for me,” Kidd said. “She testified against me.”
“So he came up to Trenton from Alabama just to kill Kendra DeGrasse, to do a favor for you?” Korngut asked.
“Yeah, that’s my cousin,” Kidd said, shrugging.
Scott carried out the hit in March of that year, shooting DeGrasse three times in the head at close range.
“Blood rule — three times for her testifying against me,” Kidd said.
Kidd had called DeGrasse and told her Scott was going to give her money to smuggle to him in prison. She waited for Scott in her car on White Street in Trenton, where she was shot and killed.
Kidd had previously threatened to kill DeGrasse for testifying against him, intimidating her to the point that she recanted her testimony in the attempted murder case, prosecutors said. He also allegedly sent a threatening letter to another woman who was a witness in that case.
“If you come to court Monday to testify against me, it’s over for me as well as you and your son,” the letter read. “Blood rule, if you didn’t know.”
Scott reached a plea agreement earlier this week that will send him to prison for 29 years. Two other men involved in DeGrasse’s murder — Kidd’s brother Henry Kidd, who drove Scott to the murder scene, and Antonio Merritt, who supplied the gun — also accepted plea deals. They will serve 10 years in prison, a reduced sentence because they cooperated with prosecutors.
Kidd also pleaded guilty yesterday to operating a drug ring that smuggled marijuana and heroin into Trenton State Prison.
While running the drug ring, he ordered a hit on fellow inmate Wilson Morales, a drug mule, after Morales did not return with supplies.
Along with other inmates — Latin Kings gang members Carmelo “Honesty” Herrara and Marcus “Qaddafi” King — Kidd arranged for Morales to be stabbed several times in the neck and chest, prosecutors said. Morales survived the attack.
“We talked about him not bringing the drugs back,” Kidd said. “It was agreed upon that he was going to be dealt with.”
Kidd’s plea deal called for concurrent sentences of 29 years for aggravated manslaughter, 25 years for leading a narcotics trafficking network and 10 years for conspiracy to commit an aggravated assault.
Reaching a plea deal meant sparing DeGrasse’s family the hardship of a trial, while all but ensuring Kidd will die in prison, Korngut said.
“It’s a horrible case,” Korngut said. “We would have prosecuted this as a death penalty case if there was a death penalty in New Jersey.”
Contact Emily Brill at ebrill@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5688.
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