CAIRO — A former Whigham cop charged with over 30 felonies related to sex crimes is now a convicted sex offender and will spend life behind bars without parole. 

Demetrio Aiello, 53, will serve three consecutive life sentences, along with 20 years, in the Georgia Department of Corrections. 

The allegations first surfaced in early June 2019 and through further investigations, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation identified three underage victims Aiello sexually assaulted from 2011 to 2017. 

In July 2019, he was indicted with 32 counts on charges of incest, aggravated child molestation, enticing a child for indecent purposes, aggravated sexual battery and child molestation.  

After 10 months of serving as a Whigham police officer beginning in 2002, Aiello was asked to resign or be terminated due to reports of unsafe actions on the job, according to Whigham chief of police Tony Black. 

South Georgia Judicial Circuit District Attorney Joe Mulholland was pleased with the sentence, especially for the victims Aiello abused. 

“He’s just a monster,” he said. “So, making sure that effectively he would never be able to do that again was certainly something that we were hoping to achieve and thanks to the judge’s sentence, we were able to do so and very happy for that.”