Reeaz Khan sentenced 22 years-to-life for killing 92-year-old Queens ‘cat lady’
A creep who sexually assaulted and murdered a kind, 92-year-old cat lady in Queens was sentenced to 22 years to life Thursday — despite his attempts to try to take back his guilty plea.
“My lawyer coerced me,” Reeaz Khan, 24, said during a dramatic sentencing in Queens Supreme Court, where he claimed he was tricked into taking a plea deal for the Jan. 2, 2020, murder of elderly woman Maria Fuentes.
Justice Kenneth Holder fired back, “Stop that! That’s absurd. You are just making this nonsense up.”
Holder recounted in detail plea negotiations that took place between the Queens District Attorney’s Office and Khan leading up to his guilty plea June 20 — the same day jurors were set to be selected for his trial.
“I had you swear under oath,” Holder said. “You were questioned extensively regarding your agreement to take this plea.”
The judge said Khan told him no one forced him to take the agreement — and that he was satisfied with his legal representation — contradicting Khan’s statements Thursday that his lawyer lied to him, telling him he’d only have to serve 11 years of the sentence.
“You simply want to delay this case,” Holder said, noting Khan had asked to dismiss a prior lawyer, delaying trial for roughly a year.
“You had a perfectly good lawyer,” Holder said. “‘I want him gone.’ Now the case is on for sentence. ‘I want my plea back.'”
“It’s over. There is no more talking. You can appeal later,” the frustrated judge said.
Khan — wearing white prison clothes and handcuffed as he sat in court — told Holder he was drunk at the time of the incident and had no memory of what happened.
“That’s not who I am,” Khan said. “My way is of love and peace. I was under the influence. I was 21-years-old.”
He insisted the sentence was “excessive and harsh.”
Holder denied Khan’s request to withdraw his plea and handed down the agreed upon penalty.
But Holder first scolded Khan, saying: “Whatever excuse you’d like to throw up… I don’t want to hear it.”
“This is easily the most despicable heinous crime I have come across” in a long time, the judge said. “You are clearly a menace to society.”
“You forfeited your right to walk around with law-abiding people,” he said.
Holder told Khan — an illegal immigrant from Guyana — that he was subject to deportation at the end of his prison term.
Before the murder, Khan had been free despite a deportation order from federal immigration officials because of prior assault and weapons convictions.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz lauded the sentencing.
“We have succeeded in getting a dangerous predator off our streets for his horrific assault of a defenseless elderly woman,” Katz said. “I hope that the long prison term provides at least some measure of solace to the victim’s loved ones.”
Fuertes — dubbed the “cat lady” by neighbors because she fed and loved the animals — had been walking near her Richmond Hill home on a winter night so she could feed her furry friends when Khan attacked her and left her half-naked in the freezing cold.
The mother of two was hypothermic and barely conscious when a good Samaritan called 911 and gave her some of the clothes off his back.
