“For that which you have done, you simply deserve no mercy,” a judge told Ryan Cato, who beat a 10-year-old boy to death in 2021.
“For that which you have done, you simply deserve no mercy,” a judge told Ryan Cato, who beat a 10-year-old boy to death in 2021.
“For that which you have done, you simply deserve no mercy,” a judge told Ryan Cato, who beat a 10-year-old boy to death in 2021.
The 10-year-old boy was made to hold weights above his head. He was whipped and struck with fists and objects for hours. His beatings were so brutal that his organs were detached and floating in his abdominal cavity.
On Friday, prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office read off a grim litany of abuse that they said the boy, Ayden Wolfe, had suffered at a sentencing for the man who killed him.
The defendant, Ryan Cato, got 25 years to life for second-degree murder.
“There are no words to adequately describe the disgust I feel, that everyone feels,” the judge, Curtis Farber, told Mr. Cato, who was convicted last month.
“I have come to the conclusion here, for that which you have done, you simply deserve no mercy,” Judge Farber said.
Mr. Cato had been living with Ayden in a Harlem apartment for only a few months before the boy’s death. He began dating the boy’s mother at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, when New York City’s schools were closed and students were learning remotely. In those months, Mr. Cato routinely beat the boy, prosecutors said, eventually killing him in a 24-hour episode of torture in March 2021.