William Kelly’s first trial ended in a mistrial, but prosecutors retried the case and secured two second-degree murder convictions in July.
OSSIPEE, N.H. — The murder case against William Kelly nearly reached a verdict once before, only to be stopped by a mistrial over constitutional concerns. Eight months later, a new jury convicted him, clearing the way for a sentence of 80 years to life for the deaths of Christine Falzone and her unborn child.
The unusual procedural path made Kelly’s prosecution more than a simple progression from arrest to verdict. His first trial in November 2025 ended after the defense challenged evidence connected to his interactions with authorities, raising concerns about his constitutional right to remain silent. Judge Mark D. Attorri declared a mistrial. The state immediately faced a choice about whether to prosecute the case again. Prosecutors said they would do so, leaving Kelly charged with two counts of second-degree murder and requiring a second jury to hear the evidence from the beginning.
The charges traced back to Dec. 17, 2023, when emergency personnel went to the Ossipee home Kelly shared with Falzone. A 911 call at approximately 11:44 a.m. reported that a woman was unconscious and not breathing. Officers and paramedics found Falzone, 33, with multiple injuries. She was pronounced dead. She was also in the late stages of pregnancy, a fact that would turn the investigation into the first New Hampshire murder prosecution brought under a law permitting a homicide charge for the death of a fetus.
Kelly was at the residence when authorities arrived and was taken into custody. According to a probable cause statement later cited in published reports, he initially said Falzone had fallen. Prosecutors eventually presented a sharply different account. They said Kelly assaulted her inside the home and inflicted the injuries that killed both Falzone and the child she was carrying. The competing explanations became part of a case that would take more than two years to reach a durable jury verdict.
The medical evidence gave the state both its homicide case and the basis for the second count. Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Mitchell Weinberg performed an autopsy on Dec. 18, 2023, and determined that Falzone had been about 35 to 37 weeks pregnant. Prosecutors later said she had roughly 100 bruises, five fractured ribs and bleeding involving her head and abdomen. At sentencing, they relied on those injuries in arguing that the punishment should reflect the severity of the violence and the fact that Falzone was visibly and substantially pregnant.
New Hampshire law made the pregnancy legally consequential in a way it would not have been under the state’s earlier homicide framework. Since 2018, state law has allowed specified homicide charges to apply to the unlawful death of a fetus beginning at the end of the 20th week after conception. Falzone’s unborn child was well past that threshold. Prosecutors therefore charged Kelly with second-degree murder for Falzone’s death and a separate second-degree murder count for the death of the child.
Kelly pleaded not guilty. His first jury trial opened in Carroll County Superior Court in November 2025. The proceeding was notable from the outset because no other defendant in New Hampshire had been tried for murder under the fetal-homicide provision. But the trial did not reach the kind of conclusion prosecutors or the defense had expected. Attorri halted the proceeding after the defense argued that constitutional protections had been violated in connection with evidence from the investigation. A mistrial meant the jury would not decide guilt or innocence in that proceeding.
The mistrial was a procedural ruling rather than an acquittal. Prosecutors remained free to retry Kelly, and the Attorney General’s Office announced its intention to do so. That distinction became essential to the case’s next phase. Months later, prosecutors returned to the same courthouse with the two murder charges. The second trial again focused on what happened inside the Ossipee residence, Falzone’s injuries, the medical evidence concerning the pregnancy and the state’s claim that Kelly’s actions caused both deaths.
On July 9, 2026, the second jury reached the decision the first jury never had an opportunity to make. Jurors found Kelly guilty of both counts of second-degree murder. The verdict established the first successful New Hampshire murder prosecution under the fetal-homicide law. Attorney General John M. Formella said after the convictions that his thoughts remained with Falzone’s loved ones and thanked the investigators, prosecutors and jurors responsible for bringing the second trial to completion.
The case then moved into a different form of dispute: how two murder convictions should translate into prison time. Prosecutors sought consecutive sentences, meaning the term imposed for one death would be followed by the term for the other. The defense urged Attorri to impose a substantially shorter total punishment that would preserve some possibility of eventual release. The judge rejected that approach at the Aug. 10 sentencing hearing.
Attorri imposed 40 years to life for Falzone’s murder. He then imposed another 40 years to life for the murder of her unborn child and ordered the terms to run consecutively. The result was an aggregate sentence of 80 years to life. His decision meant the second conviction would carry its own substantial punishment rather than run alongside the sentence for Falzone’s death. Prosecutors said afterward that the structure appropriately recognized the two deaths proven at trial.
The hearing also provided Falzone’s relatives an opportunity to describe losses that the procedural history could not capture. Family members spoke about her personality, interests and plans. Her aunt, Tiffany Marcos, described a woman who loved nature and dreamed about storm chasing. Falzone had also been preparing for the arrival of a daughter, identified in several reports as Jules. The statements shifted attention away from constitutional motions, statutes and sentencing calculations and toward the lives at the center of the prosecution.
The path from Falzone’s death to Kelly’s final trial-level sentence ultimately included an investigation, two murder charges, a not-guilty plea, a first trial that failed because of a constitutional issue, a second jury trial, two guilty verdicts and a contested sentencing hearing. That history also illustrates the different purposes of a mistrial and an acquittal. The 2025 ruling invalidated that proceeding without resolving the charges, allowing prosecutors to present the case again while requiring the new trial to comply with the court’s constitutional rulings.
Kelly remains convicted of two counts of second-degree murder as a result of the July 2026 retrial. His consecutive 40-years-to-life sentences leave him with an aggregate prison term of 80 years to life. The case also remains the first successful murder prosecution under New Hampshire’s fetal-homicide provisions, a precedent reached only after the original trial was abandoned and the state started over before a second jury.
Author note: Last updated Sept. 21, 2026.