Elizabeth Gerling Death Update – A man has been apprehended for the murder of his fiancée, the principle of an elementary school in Utica, New York.
Elizabeth Gerling, 50, of Marcy, was killed, and Jeremy Kirsch, 45, of Camden, was taken into custody on Wednesday. In the Utica City School District, Gerling oversaw Columbus Elementary School as its principal.
Officers from the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office responded to a reported death at 9111 Birch Circle in the Town of Marcy on Tuesday, August 20, 2024, at around 10 a.m.
When they got there, they found a fifty-year-old woman dead in her bed. Elizabeth A. Gerling was recognized as the female. Since Gerling’s death seemed suspicious, plans were made to have her body taken to the Onondaga County Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy.
Jeremy J. Kirch, a 45-year-old Camden resident, was identified by investigators as having spent the previous night at the residence until early the following morning. All day long, efforts were made to find Kirch. Later on, the Rome Police Department tracked him down, and he was brought to Rome Memorial Hospital for assessment.
The medical examiner’s office informed deputies on Wednesday, August 21, 2024, that Gerling’s death will be classified as a homicide and that his cause of death was suffocation from strangling.
Later that day, Kirch was questioned by detectives from the criminal investigation unit about his role in Gerling’s death after he was released from the hospital. They spoke for a brief while before he was taken to the Kurt B. Wyman Law Enforcement Building to be questioned in more detail.
Following his interview with detectives, Kirch was taken into custody on suspicion of second-degree murder. He appeared in Rome City Court on Thursday morning and was remanded without bond to the Oneida County jail.
The inquiry into Elizabeth Gerling’s death is still ongoing despite the fact that an arrest has been made. Anyone who saw a gray-colored 2019 Ford F350 towing a 2021 R-Pod camper on August 20 between 6 and 8 a.m. is asked to call the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office at (315) 765-2226.