Prosecutors say Michael Mulgrew admitted killing Eugene and Cheryl Mulgrew and now faces a June sentencing in Ocean County.

TOMS RIVER, N.J. — A 37-year-old Barnegat man pleaded guilty to murdering his parents, Ocean County prosecutors said, admitting in court that he killed Eugene and Cheryl Mulgrew inside their Lincoln Avenue home in 2023 in a case that began with a request for medical outreach and ended with a blood-soaked crime scene.

Michael Mulgrew entered guilty pleas March 11 before Ocean County Superior Court Judge Guy P. Ryan, according to the prosecutor’s office, which said the state will seek two consecutive 30-year prison terms when he is sentenced June 5. The plea moved the case from accusation to conviction and fixed the next key date in a killing that shook Barnegat Township, where the victims were known as a longtime married couple whose obituary described them as childhood sweethearts and best friends.

The official case record starts on the morning of Nov. 2, 2023, when Barnegat Township police officers were called to a residence on Lincoln Avenue at about 11 a.m. to assist medical personnel conducting a mobile outreach visit. As officers approached, prosecutors said, they saw a man walking away from the home. At the front door, they noticed what appeared to be blood. Inside, investigators found blood in several parts of the house. In a bedroom, they discovered two bodies with apparent stab wounds to the upper torso and a knife nearby. Those victims were later identified as Eugene Mulgrew, 71, and Cheryl Mulgrew, 69. A separate statement from the prosecutor’s office said officers later located the man they had seen near West Bay Boulevard and Gunning River Road and took him into custody without incident.

The details that surfaced later filled in the hours around the killings. Law&Crime, citing an affidavit of probable cause previously reported by NJ.com, said Cheryl Mulgrew contacted police and mental health services the night before in an effort to get help for her son. By the time someone arrived for an evaluation, he had already left, the report said. Hours later, Cheryl Mulgrew reportedly called again to say he had returned and the family planned to see a doctor the next morning. Prosecutors have said Michael Mulgrew later admitted that after coming back to the house, he attacked his parents with a kitchen knife during an argument about household chores, then dragged their bodies into a bedroom, packed a bag and left. The prosecutor’s office has not publicly laid out a fuller minute-by-minute account of the confrontation, and no public court filing released with the plea explains exactly how the argument turned deadly.

The public facts in the case are spare but clear on the central evidence. Prosecutors have said investigators from the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office Major Crime Unit, the Barnegat Township Police Department Detective Bureau and the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene Investigation Unit concluded Michael Mulgrew was responsible for the killings. The charging announcement in November 2023 said he faced two murder counts, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and unlawful possession of a weapon. The March 2026 plea announcement focused on the two murder counts and the prison exposure now before the court. Neither public release discussed any plea deal on the weapon charges, and prosecutors have not publicly explained whether those counts will be dismissed, merged or otherwise resolved at sentencing.

The deaths also left behind a picture of the couple that stood in sharp contrast to the violence described by investigators. Eugene “Geno” Mulgrew and Cheryl “Sherrie” Ann Mulgrew had been married for nearly 50 years, according to their obituary, which said they built a home “filled with warmth, laughter, and love.” The obituary listed their daughter, Michelle Mulgrew of Boston, along with Michael Mulgrew and other relatives, and set a memorial gathering and Mass in Barnegat later that month. Public reporting in the days after the killings described neighborhood shock and grief, but the official case timeline released by prosecutors remained focused on the response inside the house, the arrest and the criminal charges. That narrow public record has left many of the family’s private struggles, including what led Cheryl Mulgrew to seek outside help the night before, outside the formal story told by investigators.

What comes next is more defined. Prosecutors have said they will ask for two consecutive 30-year terms in New Jersey State Prison, with 30 years of parole ineligibility on each count. Because the plea has already been entered, the next courtroom milestone is sentencing on June 5. The hearing is expected to settle the prison term and clarify the status of any remaining counts from the original complaint. It may also give the court a fuller public account of the facts than the short prosecutor’s statements have provided so far, including whether family members choose to speak and whether the judge reviews the admissions made during the plea.

For Barnegat, the case has unfolded in two very different public moments: first, the sudden discovery of a violent scene on a residential street, and later, the quieter formality of a guilty plea in court. The first moment came with police vehicles, forensic teams and a suspect stopped not far from the home. The second came in a courtroom where the case was reduced to charges, dates and punishment. Between those points lay more than two years in which the victims were remembered in memorial notices and the defendant remained jailed. “They were not only life partners but best friends and loving parents,” the obituary said of Eugene and Cheryl Mulgrew, a line that has become one of the few public statements capturing who they were beyond the homicide case file.

In New Jersey, the case now stands at the sentencing stage, with Michael Mulgrew due back in court June 5 and prosecutors asking the judge to impose back-to-back 30-year prison terms.

Author note: Last updated April 7, 2026.