A Connecticut man was sentenced Tuesday to 58 years in prison for what a jury decided was his role in the 2004 killing of a New Hampshire physicist who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and champion of cold fusion.
Mozzelle Brown, 41, formerly of Norwich, was sentenced in New London Superior Court for the killing of Eugene Mallove of Pembroke. A jury convicted Brown of murder and conspiracy in October.
The 56-year-old Mallove was the author of several books, including "Fire and Ice: Searching for the Truth Behind the Cold Fusion Furor," which was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 1991. Cold fusion is a hypothetical process in which a nuclear reaction takes place at room temperature and a possible energy source that has been discounted by many experts.
Mallove was president of the Concord, New Hampshire-based New Energy Institute, editor-in-chief of its magazine, "Infinite Energy," and a former chief science writer in the news office of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees. He also earned a doctorate at Harvard.
Police said Brown and his cousin Chad Schaffer beat Mallove to death outside his childhood home in Norwich as Mallove prepared the house for rental after evicting Schaffer's mother and stepfather. Schaffer pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and is serving 16 years in prison.
Schaffer's girlfriend, Candace Foster, was charged with felony murder and other crimes. She testified against Brown and Schaffer, and her case is pending.
Mallove's children, Ethan Mallove and Kimberly Woodard, testified about the devastation that followed their father's killing. They also showed home videos of him, The Day of New London reported.
Brown, for his part, continued to deny any involvement in the killing.
"I would like to say I'm sorry to the family, but I had nothing to do with it," he said in court Tuesday.
Brown, Schaffer and Foster were arrested in a cold-case investigation years after the killing after officials dropped charges against two men who were wrongly accused of killing Mallove.
