Max Sherman. Photo courtesy Nassau County Police Department
On Thursday, under a high ceiling with light fixtures crowned by metallic eagles, Max Sherman addressed the family of Lauren Daverin, the 18-year-old girl he confessed to killing two summers ago.
“I would like to say I’m truly sorry from the bottom of my heart,” he said in court, unshackled, with his lawyers by his side. He was dressed in a black suit and blue shirt and had grown out his reddish beard since the pre-trial hearings ended in April. “I offer no excuses because there are none… I was not in the right frame of mind. I acted out of character.”
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His lawyer William Petrillo added, “For a long time, Max has been willing to accept responsibility… To me he’s been nothing but an absolute gentleman.”
That remark elicited grunts from Daverin’s family members, who were sitting in the gallery.
The sentencing at a Long Island courthouse was the coda to a murder case that tore apart a community in Rockville Centre, a suburb about 40 minutes from New York. Max and Lauren were both 18 and had apparently never met before, when, on August 22, 2013, they were hanging out with a group of peers on a pedestrian bridge. The others left them alone, and when some of the kids returned later, Lauren was naked and lifeless.
Police arrested Max, and he initially pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree sex abuse. He changed his plea to guilty in the murder charge in April, and prosecutors agreed to drop the sex-abuse charge.
Lauren’s mother, sisters, and other family members filled half the courtroom gallery for the sentencing. Some of them read victim-impact statements. Kathleen Daverin, the mother, spoke of waking up the night Lauren died to a knock at the door from police.
“They told me she was in a fight and didn’t make it,” Daverin said through tears. She also spoke of identifying her daughter’s body at the morgue. “She wasn’t moving, she wasn’t breathing—she was really dead.”
Max listened with his head turned at a 45-degree angle, not quite facing the mother, who spoke from a podium behind his right shoulder. Daverin called him a “coldblooded killer” and said no prison term would be long enough.
Lauren’s cousin Samantha Kodack also spoke. “I pray for you Max, that you never forget,” she said. Then she turned to the victim’s mother and said, “It’s over.”
Luke McLaughlin, Lauren’s uncle, took the podium and addressed the killer directly. “Max,” he said. “You destroyed a lot of lives… Your mother and father must be hanging their heads in shame.” Then he said what Kathleen Daverin had so often posted on Facebook: “You’re an animal that deserves to be in a cage for life.”
At Max’s eventual parole hearing, McLaughlin added, “I will be there with the rest of Lauren’s family to do everything in our power to make sure you stay in your cage.” He then thanked the criminal justice system for “taking another piece of garbage off the streets.”
Sherman’s parents did not attend the sentencing. His lawyer said in court that their absence was due to the media attention surrounding the case.
Judge Meryl Berkowitz sentenced Sherman to a minimum of 18 years and a maximum of life in a New York State correctional facility. He had already waived his right to appeal with the guilty plea.
“You took away not only her life, but the life that this family was going to have with her,” Berkowitz told Sherman. As two officers placed him back in handcuffs and took him from the courtroom, someone in the gallery yelled out, “Lock him up.”
Max will be almost 40 when he is first eligible for parole.
Outside the courthouse, Kathleen Daverin and the family stopped to speak with reporters. “I’ve never really dealt with the fact that she’s never coming home, and that’s now what I have to deal with,” she told VICE.
Because Max’s plea change meant the trial did not move forward with the presentation of evidence and witness testimony, questions remain about what exactly happened when the two teens were alone on the bridge, and what drove Max to do what he says he did.
Eric Paiz, who found Lauren’s body that night, told VICE after the sentencing, “Although justice has been served, I don’t think that will ever fill the hole Lauren’s mother may have in her heart.”
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