Jurors heard that exterior cameras captured sounds, movement and the final minutes before Christopher Hahn died on a rear deck in East Quogue.
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — Surveillance footage from an East Quogue home gave jurors a minute-by-minute view of a fatal six-hour attack that ended with Jeremy Allen’s conviction and life-without-parole sentence for killing his childhood friend Christopher Hahn, prosecutors said.
The case mattered beyond its shocking violence because prosecutors said the evidence did not depend on a confession or a hidden motive alone. Instead, the state built its first-degree murder case around video, audio, physical evidence and the account of a handyman who said he saw blood throughout the home and a body under a blanket on the deck before fleeing and calling police. Together, those pieces helped prosecutors argue that the killing was prolonged, deliberate and cruel enough to meet New York’s standard for a torture murder.
According to trial evidence summarized by Suffolk County prosecutors, Allen and Hahn spent the evening of Sept. 27, 2024, at a bar before going back to Allen’s home in East Quogue. The men had known each other since high school. A few minutes after midnight, prosecutors said, Allen began beating Hahn for about 18 minutes. The attack was first captured in sound, with exterior surveillance recording the noise of the blows. Video then showed Allen dragging a bruised and semi-conscious Hahn onto the rear deck. Prosecutors said Hahn was left there badly injured and unable to stand. The footage later showed Allen returning and striking Hahn’s head and body with a baseball bat. The state said Allen then left the area, came back with a plastic bag and placed it over Hahn’s head, securing it with a loose knot while Hahn was still alive and in distress.
What happened next became one of the most repeated details in the case. Prosecutors said Allen sat in a lawn chair a few feet away and watched Hahn struggle to breathe for about eight minutes. After that, the state said, Allen went inside, got a large knife and slowly stabbed Hahn 10 times in the neck. Prosecutors told jurors the entire torture lasted about six hours from the first beating until Hahn died. Law and Crime, citing the district attorney’s office and courtroom reporting, said Allen also told Hahn, “Die. It’s not so hard. Just die.” Public reporting said Allen stood over Hahn and smiled as Hahn took his final breaths. Those details, if believed, did more than show that Allen caused Hahn’s death. They supported the prosecution’s argument that the killing was prolonged and intentional, not a sudden fight or a chaotic act with no continuing purpose.
The video record also shaped what happened after the killing. Prosecutors said Allen covered Hahn’s body with a blanket and tried to clean blood inside the home and on the deck. Then he contacted a handyman to help clean up. That decision created another witness in the case. According to prosecutors, the handyman arrived, saw blood throughout the residence and saw the body on the rear deck. Allen told him he could not leave after seeing what was there, prosecutors said. The handyman persuaded Allen to let him go, escaped and called police. Officers arrested Allen at the home soon afterward. The reports reviewed do not describe a public dispute over whether the handyman’s account triggered the arrest; instead, the account appears consistently across official and local reporting as the final link between the crime scene and the police response.
That chain of evidence gave the prosecution a case with unusual clarity even though some background questions remain unanswered in public. Reporting has pointed to a recent falling out between the men over $1,000 related to a boat deal, and some accounts said text messages shown to jurors suggested the two had tried to smooth things over before meeting that night. Other reports said they had planned to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting together but wound up at a brewery instead. Those details may explain how the men came to be together, but they do not fully answer why the violence escalated so far. No public account reviewed here gives a clear motive for why Allen allegedly turned the night into a drawn-out torture killing. That gap did not stop prosecutors from proving the sequence of events, but it remains one of the unresolved questions around the case.
The legal timeline moved quickly once prosecutors laid out the evidence. Allen, 44, was convicted on Jan. 21, 2026, of murder in the first degree and tampering with physical evidence after a trial before Supreme Court Justice Timothy P. Mazzei. He returned to court on Feb. 26, 2026, for sentencing and received life in prison without the possibility of parole. District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said the evidence showed “deliberate cruelty” over several hours. The prosecution team publicly identified in the case included Assistant District Attorney Elena Tomaro of the Homicide Bureau and Assistant District Attorney Stuart Levy of the Major Crimes Bureau. Suffolk County police detectives Michael Ronca and Matt Sagistano were listed as investigators. Allen’s lawyer was identified in the public record as Colin Astarita.
At sentencing, the cold record of video and blood evidence gave way to the voices of people who knew Hahn. Friends and relatives described him as loyal, bright and deeply loved. News 12 reported that Blake Cornell said Hahn deserved more time to explore the world and to keep showing up for the people he cared about. Other courtroom reporting said Hahn’s mother denounced Allen and spoke of missing her son. Allen apologized in court, according to public reporting, and said he was bipolar. But by then the central evidence had already fixed the state’s version of the case in the trial record: a longtime friend, a house in East Quogue, hours of abuse and a visual trail that prosecutors said the defendant created around himself.
The conviction and sentence remain the public endpoint of the case. Any next step would most likely come through post-conviction motions or an appeal, and no public schedule for those proceedings was listed in the reports reviewed.
Author note: Last updated March 25, 2026.