A pall of gloom descended over the residence of Wesley Mathews' parents here Thursday after news broke out of a US court sentencing him to life in connection with the death of his three-year-old foster daughter in 2017.
"We have nothing to say," a teary-eyed elderly woman who opened the door of their two-storey house said when his family living here was approached for reaction to the sentence awarded by a jury at Dallas Wednesday.
When she came to know that media persons were at her doorstep, the sobbing woman said, "You know everything."
Neighbours said Mathews' parents were living in the house situated on the L M Paily Cross Road near Vyttila.
His parents generally kept to themselves, they said and remembered Mathews as a "very well-mannered boy".
"He (Wesley Mathews) had visited the parents with his children couple of years ago. He was a very good boy," a neighbour, who did not wish to be identified, told PTI.
Mathews, 39, was originally charged with capital murder by authorities in the US state of Texas.
The 12-member jury deliberated Wednesday afternoon for about three hours before coming to a unanimous decision to give Mathews a sentence of life in the death of Sherin.
He will be eligible for parole after 30 years' imprisonment, US media reports said.
Prosecutors argued that Mathews, hailing from Kerala, killed Sherin in October 2017.
She was adopted by Mathews and his wife Sini Mathews from an orphanage in Gaya, Bihar in 2016.
He claimed she accidentally choked to death on milk.
Mathews initially told police that Sherin went missing on October 7, 2017, after he put her outside their home at 3.00 am in Richardson, Texas because she would not drink milk.
When he checked in on her 15 minutes later, Mathews said Sherin was missing.
Her badly decomposed body was found 15 days later in a culvert near the family's home.
He later admitted she died when he "physically assisted" her in drinking the milk and got choked.
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