Julia Birch sentenced for killing Nancy Ann Frankel – A 27-year-old woman in Maryland will spend less than two decades behind bars after she admitted to killing her 92-year-old roommate and longtime family friend, strangling the elderly artist inside their shared home before staging the body and spraying it with perfume.
Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge John M. Maloney on Thursday sentenced Julia Birch to 40 years in prison but with 23 years of the term suspended in the 2021 slaying of Nancy Ann Frankel, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
Julia Birch and Nancy Ann Frankel (Montgomery County State Attorney’s Office )Julia Birch sentenced for killing Nancy Ann Frankel
Birch pleaded guilty in March to one count of second-degree for strangling Frankel. Birch must also serve five years of supervised probation when she’s released and complete 240 hours of community service.
Officers with the Montgomery County Police Department and Montgomery County Fire and Rescue personnel responded to a home at about 8:20 a.m. on July 28, 2021, in Kensington, Maryland, on a call of a possible homicide. Once there, first responders said Birch immediately admitted to killing Frankel.
Authorities said the evidence recovered from the scene of the crime matched the story Birch relayed to police about what she did to Frankel.
According to a report from Washington, D.C. CBS affiliate WUSA, Birch told investigators she first tried to suffocate Frankel, a longtime family friend, by placing and holding a plastic bag over the victim’s head.
But when Frankel poked a hole in the bag with her finger, Birch said she forced her to the ground and strangled her.
