Of all of the heinous crimes you can do, this one man actually got decades in prison for murdering his mother and sexually assaulting her!
A Welch, Oklahoma man has now been sentenced in Federal Court on Friday to a 540-month sentence for not only brutally beating his 81-year-old mother, but also sexually assaulting her on August 4, 2011. It was in July 2021 that Michael Joe Rice, 58, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Indian Country and admitted that he had killed his mother by beating her to death, and then later that is when he came back and sexually assaulted her.
Immediately after Rice’s statement at the sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Morgan criticized Rice for neglecting to even offer a simple apology for sexually assaulting and murdering his own mother. Morgan went on to note that a 540-month prison sentence would at least ensure that Rice was held accountable for what he did while sparing the rest of the family the trauma of having to undergo further courtroom proceedings.
Court documents describe how Michael Rice and his then-girlfriend described how they found his adoptive mother in the back hallway of her home in Welch and they believed she had passed away. She told the sheriff’s deputies where to find the victim’s home, and that was when law enforcement found the victim to indeed be dead in her home.
It was later on August 29, 2011, that the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation interviewed him. Rice told the agents that the murder happened because he was angry over money and that he had been depressed. He told agents that he first went to his mother’s house and began hitting her multiple times before he tackled her to the ground. His mother proceeded to ask him why he was hitting her in her head, and that is when Rice grabbed some nearby bags and stuffed them in her mouth so that she would stop yelling.
Rice continued his assault and eventually went back to his house after she had stopped talking. He told investigators that he wasn’t sure if he had killed her, but she wasn’t responding.
The Chief Medical Examiner confirmed that the victim had confirmed blunt force trauma to the head and that she had indeed been sexually assaulted.
Rice was a citizen of the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes of Oklahoma and had previously pleaded guilty to the murder in Craig County District Court but he challenged his state conviction based on the Supreme Court rulings of McGirt v. Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Criminal Appeals ruling in Hogner v. Oklahoma. At the time, the U.S. Attorney’s office had determined that Rice was yet again guilty in July 2021. They ultimately upheld his state conviction in September 2021.
“Michael Rice brutally assaulted his mother and left her for dead,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Clint Johnson. “His actions were heinous and inexcusable. I am thankful for the state and federal investigators and prosecutors who have worked diligently since 2011 to hold this killer accountable for his crimes.”
All we can do is thank god that monsters such as Michael Rice remain locked up for decades in prison and off the streets.