generic Goffstown woman pleads guilty to matricide
Apr. 15—Goffstown resident Jennifer Clow pleaded guilty Thursday to second-degree murder in the 2019 shooting death of her mother, avoiding a possible life sentence had she taken the case to trial and lost.
Clow, 51, appeared in Hillsborough County Superior Court in Manchester and pleaded to killing her mother, Sally Miller, in Miller's Rachel Circle home in June 2019. Clow was arrested at a Florida hotel several days after Miller's body was discovered.
Clow had faced three alternative murder charges — first-degree murder and two second-degree murder charges, one specifying she knowingly murdered Miller, the other that she did so recklessly.
She pleaded guilty to the reckless charge, the lowest degree of culpability, said her lawyer, public defender Julian Jefferson. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 21.
Had Clow taken the matter to trial, she would have been sentenced to life without parole if convicted of first-degree murder.
Prosecutors say that after she was arrested, Clow told state police she hated Miller for staying with her husband despite revelations of past sexual abuse against their children.
Clow said she had her own mental health and substance abuse issues and contemplated killing herself at times. In 2008, she wrote in a diary "if I could shoot (Miller) & get away with it, I would."
She shot Miller as she slept, covered the body and came and went for the next eight days, covering the body as the stench grew, according to the prosecution. Miller confided to neighbors that her daughter was stealing from her, she was out of money and was going to have to sell her house.
Homicide prosecutor Jeffery Strelzin said he will seek a minimum prison sentence of 35 years. Jefferson has not decided how long a sentence he will request. He said more about the incident will emerge at the sentencing hearing.
Clow has been jailed at Valley Street jail since her arrest.
Goffstown police found Miller dead from a single gunshot wound after neighbors called and asked police to check on her. A widow, Miller had been living with her daughter at Medville Cooperative, a resident-owned manufactured home park off Goffstown Back Road for people 55 and older.
