'True monsters exist out in the world': Man serving life for raping, killing his high school teacher as a teen, admits to attacking youth services worker

Philip Chism in court. (Courtroom screenshot from WBZ/YouTube)

A Massachusetts man serving a life sentence for raping, strangling and stabbing his algebra teacher with a box cutter when he was 14 in 2013 pleaded guilty this week to a separate assault of a state youth services worker when he was awaiting trial back then in the murder case.

Philip Chism, now 25, pleaded guilty in Boston Juvenile Court on Friday to charges of attempted murder, assault with intent to murder, assault with a dangerous weapon — a cinder block wall — and kidnapping in the attack of the then 29-year-old female worker on June 2, 2014, when Chism was 15, the Boston Globe reported. He was sentenced to 17 to 20 years in state prison to run concurrent with his life sentence for killing his former teacher, Colleen Ritzer, 24, the previous year.

He is accused of following the youth services worker into the bathroom at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Dorchester on June 2, 2014, prosecutors said. He choked and punched her and attacked her with a sharpened pencil before she escaped while staffers restrained him as he repeatedly yelled, “I’m gonna kill them all,” Boston’s Fox affiliate WFXT reported, citing Suffolk County District Assistant District Attorney David Bradley.

“Following this horrific and terrifying event, I remembered the bruises across my face, around my body, and my neck,” the prosecutor read from a statement from the victim, who was not present in court, according to a copy of the statement published by the news outlet. “His face sometimes still haunts me, that lack of any emotion just ready to kill. Sometimes I wake out of a deep sleep, panting, fighting my way out of a choke hold that isn’t currently happening. Sometimes tears well up in my eyes unexpectedly reminding me of how scared I was and still am that he will come for me again.

“I have to be able to get up each day to tell him that I did survive, that what you did doesn’t control me, that you did not kill me, that you will not be my story. True monsters exist out in the world. Philip Chism is a monster, a murderer.”

“My recommendation to the courts is that he remain in prison for the rest of his life, locked away without the means to hurt another person,” she continued. “Time will not erase or fix what he has done or how he has affected my life. I have to constantly live with these memories. I accept that. We should not accept nor allow him to hurt anyone else. Please do not give him that opportunity ever again.”

After Chism killed Ritzer, he dumped her body behind the school. Police found her remains in the woods the next day. She had been stabbed 16 times in the neck. A note nearby read, “I hate you all,” the Globe reported.

His lawyers said he had a psychotic breakdown and had been hallucinating, the newspaper reported.

Ritzer’s family gave emotional impact statements when Chism was sentenced in 2016, Boston’s CBS affiliate WBZ reported.

“Put this animal behind bars,” her brother said, the station reported.

The post ‘True monsters exist out in the world’: Man serving life for raping, killing his high school teacher as a teen, admits to attacking youth services worker first appeared on Law & Crime .