MONTICELLO, New York — Twelve years after April Parker's remains were found in the woods behind the apartment complex where she had lived, a Sullivan County court has closed the case against the man a jury found responsible. Keymarroo Guiden, 53, of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison for murder in the second degree, District Attorney Brian P. Conaty announced on Friday, October 30. The sentence was imposed by Sullivan County Supreme Court Judge Stephan G. Schick, following Guiden's conviction for the intentional killing of his girlfriend, April Parker, 31, of Monticello.

Source: Sullivan County District Attorney's Office, Oct 30 2026 (via EIN Presswire)

The case began in May 2014, when the Village of Monticello Police Department opened a missing-person investigation for Parker and soon turned it over to the New York State Police, according to the district attorney. On June 10, 2014, state police discovered skeletal remains in the woods behind the Sleepy Hollow complex in Monticello, about 150 yards from where Parker and Guiden had been living. The remains had been dismembered, the district attorney's office said, and the missing-person inquiry became a homicide investigation. DNA analysis later confirmed the remains were April Parker's.

The trip to New York City that prosecutors said was an alibi

Investigators interviewed more than 130 people and assembled thousands of pages of records, eliminating every other possible suspect and identifying Guiden, in the district attorney's words, to the exclusion of all others. The evidence showed that on May 9, 2014, Guiden left Parker's apartment with her two children from a separate relationship and drove them to New York City under the guise of visiting their father — who, investigators found, had no information that they were coming. On the way, Guiden contacted Verizon Wireless and had Parker's telephone number transferred to a Motorola Droid phone in his own possession. When he returned to Monticello, prosecutors said, he falsely reported that Parker had gone missing.

Prosecutors told the jury that by the time Guiden left Monticello on May 9, he had already killed Parker and disposed of her remains in the woods behind Sleepy Hollow. Immediately after the number was switched, and after his return, he used Parker's own phone number to masquerade as her and make it appear she was alive, the district attorney said. The digital trail went further: the evidence showed Guiden also used Parker's Facebook account, posting photographs of her and communicating with her friends so that it would look as if she was still alive — a deception prosecutors said bought him time and distance between himself and the discovery of her remains.

"This was the most gruesome and heinous murder committed in Sullivan County in decades," Conaty said. "This defendant is the epitome of domestic violence personified, despite his attempt to mask who he really is. As was stated at sentencing by April's loved ones, the defendant's selfish and cruel act stole the life of a loving mother, sister, daughter, and valued community member. Today's sentence ensures that this defendant spends his life in prison. I sincerely thank every member of law enforcement who, for years, tirelessly fought to find justice for April." The case was prosecuted at trial by Chief Assistant District Attorney Michael J. Puma, with Executive Assistant District Attorney Jenna Hastings.

Why a 2014 case took until 2026 to finish

Monticello is the county seat of Sullivan County in New York's Catskills region, and the Sleepy Hollow complex sits in a village where a disappearance in a small apartment community is not easily forgotten. The long road from a missing-person report in May 2014 to a sentence in October 2026 reflects how the case was built: there was no confession described in the district attorney's account and no single eyewitness to the killing. Instead, investigators assembled a circumstantial and digital case — remains identified by DNA, a phone number moved to the defendant's handset on the very trip he used as his alibi, messages and Facebook posts prosecutors said he sent in Parker's name, and more than 130 interviews narrowing the field to one person. A Sullivan County jury heard that evidence over 12 days and returned a guilty verdict, announced on June 23, 2026, according to Radio Catskill's coverage of the verdict.

For readers in the Punjabi diaspora — in New York's Hudson Valley and across the state — the case also carries a hard, practical lesson that domestic-violence advocates repeat in every community: the most dangerous deception in this case was not sophisticated technology but the appearance of normal life, a phone that still answered and a Facebook page that still posted. Parker's friends were, on the prosecution's evidence, communicating with her killer while believing they were communicating with her. Anyone whose loved one goes quiet and then suddenly communicates only by text, while refusing calls or visits, is entitled to ask questions — and, if the answers do not make sense, to call police, as someone's persistence ultimately did in Monticello.

April Parker was 31 years old, a mother of two children whom Guiden drove to New York City in May 2014 as part of the cover story the jury rejected. With the sentence imposed, Sullivan County's longest-running homicide case of its era ends where the investigation began — 150 yards behind the homes at Sleepy Hollow, and with a name, a verdict and a prison term attached to it at last.