A murder charge against a New Rochelle woman accused of killing her girlfriend and hiding the body in a closet for a week has been upgraded because the victim was allegedly tortured for months — and she faces additional charges alleging abuse of four other women.
Kenya Tilford, 41, pleaded not guilty to first- and second-degree murder Tuesday following her indictment in the September 2023 suffocation killing of Concetta Morton in Tilford’s apartment at 155 Franklin Avenue. Morton, 27, had been living there in the months leading up to her death.
Tilford was arrested Sept. 15 at an Elmsford motel after a relative who had seen Morton’s body in the third-floor apartment notified police and directed them to where Tilford was. She was initially charged with second-degree murder and concealment of a corpse.
The first-degree murder charge is under the theory that Tilford “acted in an especially cruel and wanton manner pursuant to a course of conduct intended to inflict and inflicting torture upon the victim prior to the victim’s death.”