Sarra Gilbert: What Happened To Mari Gilbert’s Daughter?

Who Is Mari Gilbert’s Daughter?

Sarra Gilbert is a convicted killer, mental patient, and the daughter of activist and murder victim advocate Mari Gilbert. Sarra is the one responsible for her mother’s death. She killed her mother Mari Gilbert by stabbing her to death. Sarra is the sister of Shannan Maria Gilbert, a prostitute who disappeared in May 2010.

Sarra Gilbert: Bio Summary

Sarra Gilbert is a woman who gained massive public attention after killing her mother Mari Gilbert. Mari Gilbert worked as a department manager at her local Walmart. Sarra was born on January 17, 1989. As of January 17, 2023, she will be 34 years old.

Sarra Gilbert is also known as Sarra Elizabeth Gilbert. Her siblings are Shannan Gilbert, Sherre Gilbert, and Stevie Smith. Shannon Gilbert was a sex worker. She was nowhere to be found in May 2010. After some time of investigation, her remains were located.

Shannan Gilbert’s remains were found in Oak Beach in December 2011, 19 months after her disappearance. Her investigation led to the finding of the remains of 10 homicide victims dispersed along Ocean Parkway in New York.

Shannan Gilbert’s death was claimed to be caused by drowning but her mother Mari Gilbert championed that she was killed by a serial killer. Later, an independent autopsy sought by the family found that Shannan may have been strangled to death.

Also Read: Sherre Gilbert: Where Is Mari Gilbert’s Daughter Now?

Meanwhile, there isn’t much information about Sarra Gilbert’s father and she was raised by her mother. Her mother was a single mother and the family faced poverty. Sarra’s attorney John Ray said that she was a victim of sexual abuse by one of her mother’s boyfriends.

Sarra Gilbert’s sister Sherre also experienced the same abuse as hers. Sarra’s mother reportedly practiced “black magic,” which ultimately led Sarra to believe she was a demon. Before her mother’s death, her fiancé was Elroy J. Shulterbrandt, per sources.

At age fourteen, Sarra Gilbert aborted her first child. She ended up dropping out of school and moving in with her boyfriend. He was reportedly a twenty-two-year-old drug dealer called Manny. They welcomed a son in 2009, a boy named Hayden.

Sarra Gilbert’s boyfriend served time for drug arrests. Sarra from the early 2010s to mid-2010s became more dependent on her family. Her mother helped her by all accounts and cared for the baby when needed.

What Happened To Mari Gilbert’s Daughter?

Mari Gilbert’s daughter Sarra Gilbert ended up imprisoned in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. She was charged with second-degree murder and fourth-degree possession of a weapon, and convicted of murder. She got sentenced to 25 years in jail in August 2017.

This happened after she murdered her mother Mari Gilbert by stabbing her to death in her apartment on Warren Street in Ellenville, New York, on July 23, 2016. According to the authorities, Sarra stabbed her mother over 200 times. She also beat her mother up with a fire extinguisher and sprayed the fire extinguisher in her mouth.

Footage from a responding police officer’s body camera that was played for the jury at trial displayed Sarra telling officers “I killed my mom,” but she later maintained that the victim was still alive. She later said, “[S]he’s still alive, right? [I]s this like a joke? I know something is going to happen. My mom is not dead. My mom is not dead.”

What Is Sarra Gilbert’s Illness?

Sarra Gilbert is said to have suffered from schizophrenia. A report alleged that she “had voices in her head telling her to carry out the crime.” Sarra also told officers that she had been hearing voices that referred to the victim as the “devil” and a “bad God.”

Sarra Gilbert exhibited psychotic symptoms before the murder. She has diagnoses of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type). She had been hospitalized at least seven times before the incident.

Also Read: “Please reduce the years for me” – 19 years old Notorious robber cries after judgment was passed at the Court

Sarra Gilbert’s lawyers requested that she should be sent to a mental health facility but The state Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department in Albany ruled that she should continue serving 25 years in prison instead. The argument was that the jury should have found that she could not understand right from wrong due to a mental disease or defect.

The appeals panel wrote in its ruling: “We have no doubt that the defendant suffers from a debilitating mental illness that blurs the lines of fiction and reality, and we are certainly sympathetic to the difficult life circumstances she has endured,”

“The proof, however, reasonably supports the jury’s finding that, at the time of the killing, the defendant had the substantial capacity to know and appreciate both the nature and consequences of her conduct and that such conduct was wrong.”

Court records stated that Sarra Gilbert even doubted that her sister Shannon “was actually deceased despite physical evidence confirming as much, and she testified that, at one point, she believed that she and Shannon had switched bodies”.