Ruth Correa, who pleaded guilty this summer to killing three members of the Lindquist family with her brother in 2017, will be sentenced in March.

Correa is scheduled to return to New London Superior Court Part A, where major crimes are heard, on March 28 to be sentenced by Judge Hillary B. Strackbein for the murders of Janet and Kenneth Lindquist and their son Matthew.

On that day, the judge will hear a presentence investigation report, which is meant to help the court assess risk and issue a fair sentence.

Correa has been held at York Correctional Facility in lieu of a $2.5 million bond for more than three years.

Her adoptive brother, Sergio Correa, was convicted by a jury Tuesday on 13 of 14 charges in the crime spree nearly four years ago and is scheduled to be sentenced on March 2 by Judge Hunchu Kwak, who presided over his trial.

Ruth Correa, 27, of Hartford pleaded guilty in May to three counts of murder during the commission of a felony in the deaths of 21-year-old Matthew, 56-year-old Kenneth and 61-year-old Janet Lindquist. She signed a cooperation agreement with state prosecutors this summer, agreeing to take the stand against her brother in exchange for a deal: the state will suggest she serve 40 years in prison instead of the 180 years she faced without the agreement.

Ultimately, the sentencing decision is left up to the judge.

Ruth Correa took the stand last month during her brother’s trial, calmly delivering a play-by-play of the hours she said she and her brother spent brutalizing the Lindquist family after driving from Hartford to Griswold to trade drugs for guns. She spoke so softly, the judge and attorneys had to repeatedly ask her to speak up.

She told the jury that on Dec. 19, 2017, she woke up, smoked marijuana and got her hair cut before driving to Griswold with her Sergio to meet with a man she later learned was Matthew Lindquist. Her brother had been planning to give Matthew Lindquist heroin and cash in exchange for guns Matthew's father kept in a safe in their basement.

During the deal, Ruth Correa said something went wrong and Matthew Lindquist ran into the woods. Her brother, she said, chased him and struck him with a machete. Sergio then turned to her and told her to “Get him.”

Ruth Correa told the jury that her brother took her hand and “made me stab him.” She said they both stabbed Matthew Lindquist repeatedly all over his body and she could smell blood. A medical examiner testified that Matthew Lindquist was stabbed 67 times.

She then walked the jury through the home invasion and arson: how she heard her brother smash Kenneth Lindquist’s head with a baseball bat; how she struck the family’s dog, Skylar, so hard with a golf club that it broke; and how she stayed in a bedroom with a terrified Janet Lindquist until her brother killed Janet, too.

Ruth Correa said she took cash from Janet Lindquist, stole bags full of towels and laundry detergent and took the Lindquists' Christmas presents. Then, she told the jury, they set the house on fire.

During her brother’s trial, the defense called only one witness: a woman named Erica Teal who met Ruth Correa in prison. Teal testified that while the pair played cards in a recreational room at York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Ruth Correa told her about how she stabbed a boy to death in the woods and how it felt “euphoric.”

Defense attorneys throughout the trial poked holes in Ruth Correa’s testimony, pointing out changes in her account of the night and scrutinizing her testimony about what she was wearing and whether she had a knife on her when she went home after the murders.

Her brother's defense team also peppered her with questions about her mental health. Ruth Correa told the court that she felt abandoned by her family, that she had been drinking and smoking marijuana frequently, that until she was in prison she’d had no treatment for her mental illnesses and that she thought her brother wanted her dead.

Despite the crimes she described in graphic detail, she became emotional only when talking about how hard it was to be away from her son and daughter while in jail. When asked about her children, she burst into tears, causing the court to take a recess.

As her brother’s defense attorney Joseph Lopez pointed out, the signed cooperation agreement required Ruth Correa to testify during the trial and to do so truthfully.

During a cross-examination she told Lopez that not all of what she’s testified to has been the truth. When he asked her if she’d told lies under oath, she quietly replied, “Some.”

t.hartz@theday.com