A North Carolina man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for the murder of his girlfriend's 15-year-old son, whose head he repeatedly banged against the floor until he died — while the victim's younger sister watched.

Joseph Ray Carroll, 54, was convicted of first-degree murder and two counts of felony child abuse last week in the 2021 death of Casey Johnson in Rockingham, which is some 70 miles southeast of Charlotte. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

"I cannot adequately express the horrors these children experienced at the hands of this defendant," Richmond County District Attorney Jamie Adams said in a press release . "As a career prosecutor, I have never encountered a case like this one. It has forever changed these children, the jurors, c

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