Mother sentenced to life, boyfriend to be sentenced next week, in death of 6-year-old

Middletown, Ohio: The remains of 6-year-old James Robert Hutchinson still have not been recovered from the Ohio River where his mother and her boyfriend dumped them in February of this year.

On Monday, September 13, 29-year-old Brittany Gosney was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 21 years. It was the maximum sentence the judge could have handed down.

Last month Gosney pleaded guilty to a count of murder and two counts of child endangering as a part of a plea deal. The additional charges against her were dismissed.

According to WLWT the sentencing consists of 15 years to life for the murder charge and an additional 3 years for each of the child endangering charges. The sentences are to run consecutively.

Gosney told police that her boyfriend, 42-year-old James Hamilton had been pressuring her to get rid of her children.

This assertion is corroborated by interview videos released by police this week. In those videos Hamilton tells police, "I told her, 'either you need to find somewhere to go with you and your disrespectful kids, or I'm leaving.'"

Hamilton told investigators that this is something that the couple had done before.

"She was supposed to take the kids up there give them a scare tactic," he said. "Drop them off for a few minutes, then turn around and go get them because they were all acting up real bad."

After James' death, Hamilton asserts that his role was merely one of assistance.

"She wanted something to help hold him down in the water. There's a brick tied to his chest," he told police. Only once they informed him that he would be charged for his part did he begin to show emotion saying, "Now I'm going to jail just for helping her."

Hamilton has pleaded guilty to charges of kidnapping, endangering children and gross abuse of a corpse. He is scheduled to be sentenced on October 5 and faces a maximum possible sentence of 19 years in prison.