Man gets life without parole for killing son for insurance
MANASSAS, Va. — A Virginia man convicted of murdering his 15-month-old-son to collect on life insurance was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without parole.
Joaquin Rams of Manassas was convicted earlier this year in the 2012 death of his son Prince.
Rams had taken out more than $500,000 in life insurance on Prince in the months before his death. The boy died during an unsupervised visit ordered by a Maryland judge over the objections of Prince’s mother, who said she feared for her child’s safety. Prince died on just the fourth unsupervised visit Rams had with his son.
Obtaining a conviction in Prince’s death was a challenge for prosecutors, and took several years of legal wrangling. The medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on Prince concluded that he drowned, but later the state’s chief medical examiner overruled that finding and changed the cause of death to undetermined.