Anoka Man Pleads Guilty in Cold-Case Murder of Infant Daughter
An Anoka man who admitted to killing his 3-month-old child more than 13 years ago has agreed to plead guilty to one count of 2nd-degree murder.
38-year-old Benjamin Alexander Russell agreed to the plea deal last week and is expected to be sentenced to more than 11 years in prison in July.
Russell was arrested in 2022 after a woman reported to police that he had admitted to killing their 3-month-old child. Detectives spoke to the mother, who said that Russell called her on July 4, 2022 saying he needed to talk about something important. Russell went to the mother’s house and described in detail how he had suffocated the girl because she wouldn’t stop crying during a January 2009 incident.
At the time of the death, Russell told authorities that he put the child down for a nap around 12:30 p.m. He told authorities he went to check on the girl about an hour later and found that she had rolled onto her stomach and was face down on a blanket, unresponsive. An autopsy ruled her cause of death was positional asphyxia.
Court documents show that prosecutors were seeking an aggravated sentence but that request was dropped as part of the plea deal. Russell remains in custody and will be formally sentenced on July 31.
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