BRONX MAN SENTENCED TO LIFE IMPRISONMENT FOR MURDERING HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND, THE MOTHER OF TWO OF HIS CHILDREN

Bronx District Attorney Robert T. Johnson announced today that a man who stabbed his ex-girlfriend to death nearly two years ago was sentenced to a maximum term of life imprisonment.

State Supreme Court Justice John Carter sentenced Ronald Pilgram, 34, to a term of 22 years to life imprisonment. On April 11, 2008 Pilgram was found guilty on a single count of Murder in the 2nd degree in the death of Denise Collins, 22-year-old mother of their two young sons. The jury convicted Pilgram after less than four hours of deliberations.

Collins was murdered on June 8, 2006 in the East 226th Street apartment that she shared with her two young sons who were 8 years-old and 3-years-old when the crime occurred. Pilgram, the boys’ father, had ended his relationship with the victim and had moved out of the apartment to live with another woman, about two years before the fatal stabbing.

The jury heard testimony that there was a history of domestic violence between Pilgram and Collins and that the two had been embroiled in an ongoing dispute over custody of the children. On the day of the murder Pilgram and Collins began arguing over the telephone and continued arguing when he showed up at the apartment to pick up the children because Collins had to go to work. The heated argument ended when Pilgram plunged a knife into Collins’ neck severing the jugular vein and carotid artery. Before leaving with the children, who were in another room when their mother was killed, Pilgram cleaned up the blood and ripped out the smoke detector in the apartment. He turned on the gas from the kitchen stove and closed all of the windows.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorneys Aaron Kaplan and Andrew Sherwood.