A Long Island music teacher has pleaded not guilty to murdering his sister-in-law, a young graduate student, in a case that has stunned a North Massapequa neighborhood and the school district where he worked. The plea keeps him behind bars as the prosecution moves ahead.
The defendant was identified as 27-year-old Joseph Horner. He pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and is being held without bail as the case proceeds through the courts.
The woman who was killed was 25-year-old Victoria Castle, a doctoral student at Stony Brook University. She was found not breathing by police on Monday morning at a ground-floor apartment attached to a home in North Massapequa, where officers responded to the scene.
According to prosecutors, Castle was attacked without warning inside the home. They allege that Horner assaulted her and placed her in a chokehold, an account laid out as the basis for the murder charge he now faces.
Prosecutors also allege that Horner abused Castle while she was unconscious before authorities were called to the scene. Those allegations form part of the case against him, which remains a set of accusations he has denied by pleading not guilty.
Investigators have pointed to a troubling backdrop to the case. Prosecutors said Horner had harbored an attraction to his sister-in-law for years, and noted that his wife, Castle's sister, was away at a bachelorette party at the time. Horner had been married for three years, and his wife was not home when the attack is said to have occurred.
The charges have also reverberated at the school where Horner taught. He worked as an elementary school music teacher in the Oceanside School District, and the district said in a statement that he had been placed on administrative leave effective immediately, pending further review, adding that the allegations had no connection to the district or its students.
In the courtroom, the proceedings were heavy with emotion, as members of Castle's family wept and held one another. Horner, who appeared alongside his own relatives, remains charged but not convicted, and is entitled to the presumption of innocence as the case against him moves forward.