New Jersey Man Sentenced To 190 Years In Prison For Murder Of His Girlfriend, Ex-Girlfriend and Her New Boyfriend

A New Jersey man has been sentenced to almost 200 years in prison for the murder of three people, in what the judge called “the most depraved, heinous and cruel” case he’d ever presided over. 

According to Essex County court documents, Jeffrey Holland, 30, was sentenced on Tuesday for the 2016 murders of his girlfriend, Tiniquah Rouse, 21, his ex-girlfriend, Ashley Jones, 23, and her new boyfriend, Jarrell Marshall, 28. 

In the incident, which occurred on January 29, Holland reportedly strangled and drowned his girlfriend, Rouse, inside her Newark apartment, and hid her newborn in a closet underneath a pile of clothes before he fled the scene. The baby was later found unharmed.

The next day, officials say Holland broke into his ex’s apartment and shot both Jones and Marshall in front of three children between the ages of 1 and 4, two of which were his own. 

One year later, according to PEOPLE, Holland was convicted on 18 criminal counts, including desecration of human remains, hindering, felony murder, burglary, theft, unlawful possession of a weapon, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon and much more. Since then, he’s been sentenced to 190 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after 158 years. 

“If you happen to survive, you will be then subject to 5 years of parole supervision,” Judge Ronald Wigler said of the “most depraved, heinous and cruel” case he’d ever presided over. 

“The sheer depravity and violence that occurred, in this case, is incomprehensible,” Assistant prosecutor Justin Edwab said. “This defendant brutally killed three innocent people and in the case of Rouse desecrated her body. His crimes are even more cruel because they were carried out in the presence of very young children, including two of his own children.”