No explanations - father confesses to beating 20-year-old daughter to death in her sleep

Investigators can find no motive for the baseball bat attack carried out by doting psychologist father

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Rober Kelly's 20-year-old daughter Megan

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Robert Kelly, a licensed psychologist and therapist, has pleaded guilty to attacking his 20-year-old daughter, Megan, while she slept. Although he admits to the murder he refuses to give a reason for the attack.

On 9th May 2011, Kelly (53) went into his daughter’s bedroom in their home, in Oxford, Michigan, and beat her around the head with a baseball bat.

On Wednesday, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and now faces up to 30 years in prison. He will be eligible for parole after 20 years.

A police dispatcher, Tony Van Houten, testified “I asked him if he knew who did it. And he stated, ‘Yes, I did’,” reports Detroit Free Press.

Julie Roberts, Kelly’s ex-wife who was living with them at the time, found her daughter bleeding and unconscious.

Having beaten Megan around the head he walked to the Oxford Village police station at 8am and confessed.

Megan fell into a coma and was removed from life support on 27th July 2011.

Kelly’s defense lawyer Sanford Schulman said he did not know why his client had committed the murder. He added “It’s obviously a mental health issue.”

“From what we can tell, he loved his daughter deeply. They were very close. It was like something in him snapped. So that's why this plea deal seemed appropriate…I've handled over 60 murder cases, and this is the strangest one,” Schulman said.

The Michigan Center for Forensic Psychiatry found Kelly competent for trial. However, an expert testified that he was “unable to distinguish right from wrong” on the night of the murder.

Kelly will go to trial on 11th July.

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