By: Najla Alexander
Authorities in Monmouth County announced that a Matawan man has been sentenced to 30 years in state prison for killing his father and then hiding the body in the home the men shared.
Monmouth County Prosecutor Raymond S. Santiago said Kenneth H. Knapp Jr., 33, was sentenced yesterday, Thursday, April 18, by Monmouth County Superior Court Judge Henry P. Butehorn.
Officials stated that at approximately 12:35 p.m. on Sunday, May 1, 2022, patrol officers from the Matawan Police Department responded to a home in order to conduct a welfare check on the victim, 58-year-old Kenneth Knapp Sr., after friends and family members had been unsuccessful in contacting him over the previous week.
In the home’s basement, officials say, officers located Knapp’s body, wrapped and bound inside a tarp, hidden inside a large plastic container.
According to officials, a cooperative investigation by Detectives of the MCPO Major Crimes Bureau and the Matawan Police Department revealed that Knapp, a former collegiate wrestler, had assaulted and killed his father in the home’s bathroom a week earlier before hiding his body in the basement.
He was taken into custody in Somerset County on Friday, August 19, 2022, and then lodged in the Monmouth County Correctional Institution (MCCI), officials said.
Earlier this year, authorities say, Knapp pleaded guilty to charges of first-degree Aggravated Manslaughter and second-degree Desecration of Human Remains.
Officials say Judge Butehorn sentenced him to 25 years in state prison on the Manslaughter charge and a consecutive five years on the Desecration charge, with the former term subject to the provisions of New Jersey’s No Early Release Act (NERA), which mandates that 85 percent be served prior to the possibility of parole.