Child killer gets new sentence Judges in N.H. add 15 years in death of 21-month-old girl

CONCORD, N.H. – The Rochester man convicted of repeatedly abusing and finally killing his girlfriend’s young daughter now has a longer prison sentence.

A special panel of judges added 15 years to Chad Evans’ sentence on Monday, making it 43 years to life. It was the first time a murder sentence was extended under a 2001 law allowing the state to appeal sentences.

Evans was convicted of murdering 21-month-old Kassidy Bortner in 2000. Prosecutors recommended a sentence of 60 years to life, but Superior Court Judge Tina Nadeau gave him 28 years to life for second-degree murder.

On Monday, the state Sentence Review Division, a panel of Superior Court judges, imposed two additional sentences for assaults before the girl’s death. The additional minimum prison terms are five years and 10 years.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Will Delker said the original sentence was too short.

“It just seemed way out of whack with the severity of the crime and the innocence of the victim,” he said.

Evans, of Rochester, was 30 when a Strafford County Superior Court jury convicted him in 2001 of murdering Kassidy, the daughter of his girlfriend, Amanda Bortner.

Testimony indicated that several people knew Kassidy was being severely abused, and the case led lawmakers to strengthen the state’s child abuse laws. Amanda Bortner also served jail time for failing to protect the child from Evans.

Amanda and Kassidy Bortner moved into an apartment in Rochester with Evans in the fall of 2000, when Amanda Bortner was 18. Evans’s abuse of Kassidy began almost immediately, prosecutors said, and quickly escalated.

Bortner knew Evans was beating her daughter, but she told people Kassidy fell down often and bruised easily, testimony indicated. At times, she did not want to take her daughter to day care because she feared someone would report the injuries.

On Nov. 9, 2000, Bortner drove a badly bruised and semiconscious Kassidy to her sister’s apartment in Kittery, Maine, where the sister’s boyfriend baby-sat her. The boyfriend called 911 several hours later because Kassidy was struggling to breathe and her eyes had rolled back in her head. The girl died that afternoon at York Hospital.