Jean Jocelin Pierre and Nerlande Foreste (Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office)
A 50-year-old man in Maryland will spend several decades behind bars for brutally killing his wife, stuffing her body in a shipping container and discarding it in a dumpster. In a rare “no-body” murder case, Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Kevin G. Hessler handed down the maximum sentence of 40 years in prison to Jean Jocelin Pierre for the 2019 slaying of Nerlande Foreste, authorities announced.
A jury in May spent only two hours deliberating before finding Pierre guilty on one count of second-degree murder in Foreste’s death, even though her body was never recovered.
According to a press release from the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office, Pierre fatally stabbed his wife on Aug. 21, 2019, inside their home in the 20000 block of Rothbury Lane in Montgomery Village, about 40 miles west of Baltimore, Maryland. The married couple shared the home with Pierre’s then-14-year-old daughter, who officials say has requested not to be publicly identified.
After stabbing Foreste, Pierre stuffed her body inside a shipping container and tossed the remains in a dumpster. The shipping container is believed to have been incinerated at a facility in Dickerson, Maryland. Prosecutors said it was the third time in the county’s history that a defendant was convicted in a “rare ‘no-body’ murder case.”
In a press conference following the sentencing hearing, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said that the relationship between Pierre and Foreste was crumbling at the time of her violent death.
“This was a marriage that was falling apart,” McCarthy said. “The defendant, in this case, was in this relationship solely and only for the purpose of obtaining a green card.”
McCarthy also thanked Pierre’s daughter, who contacted authorities about her father’s suspicious behavior and provided key testimony during the trial that resulted in Pierre confessing to Foreste’s murder.
“We are particularly grateful for this brave young woman,” he said. “It was one of the bravest things you could ever imagine. And I think it was because she loved the victim in this case.”
Foreste was Pierre’s second wife. He lost his first wife and several children in the catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010. He and his daughter — who was severely injured and had to have her leg amputated after being rescued from the rubble of their home — were the sole survivors from the family. Pierre and his daughter then came to the U.S. as refugees, where he met and eventually married Foreste.
Foreste immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager and became a nurse.
Foreste’s brother, Sam Foreste, also spoke during the press conference, saying that the American Dream “turned out to be a tragedy” for his sister. He also said that Pierre’s senseless decision to kill Foreste robbed his daughter of a woman she had come to love.
“The second woman that she called Mother — he took that away from her,” Foreste’s brother said.
Pierre, who reported Foreste missing five days after killing her at the urging of his daughter, initially claimed that she left him for another man. But his daughter testified that on the day Foreste went missing, her father failed to pick her up from an event, did not pick up his phone, took several minutes to open the door when she finally got home and then refused to let her into their bedroom to check on Foreste, according to a report from the Daily Voice.
The day before Pierre reported Foreste missing, his daughter said he came home with carpet cleaner that he used in the master bedroom. Investigators later said they found blood spatter in multiple areas of the master bedroom and the couple’s bathroom.
“(Pierre’s) actions have not only had an immense effect on the Foreste family and friends, but he also murdered his daughter’s step-mother in their shared home, lied repeatedly about her whereabouts to his daughter, forced her to report her mother’s disappearance to police, and eventually forced her to testify against him in a criminal trial. It was heartbreaking to watch the daughter have to testify against her father, in his presence, about the death of a woman she loved and is still grieving the loss of,” prosecutors reportedly wrote in the sentencing memo. “The Defendant took the life of Nerlande Foreste without hesitation or concern for anything other than his own selfish desires. When she disappeared, he pretended that she left him for another man despite a mound of evidence to the contrary. When he discarded her body in the dumpster, the Defendant erased any chance for full finality and closure for Nerlande Foreste’s family and friends.”
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