Marc Dern of East Hampton sentenced to 5 years in killing of friend and colleague Kevin Somers of Amagansett

A former assistant caddie master at an exclusive East Hampton golf club was sentenced to five years in prison Monday after he admitted killing the club’s head caddie when a verbal argument turned violent inside his home last year.

Marc Dern, 35, of East Hampton, accepted a plea agreement in December to first-degree manslaughter in the killing of his friend and colleague Kevin Somers, 45, of Amagansett. Dern will also be subject to five years of supervision following his release from prison.

“The sentence … is certainly not a true measure of Kevin’s full value to the community, to his family, to even those on the other side of the courtroom,” Suffolk Supreme Court Justice John Collins said during the proceeding. “By all accounts, he was a beloved member of his community.”

Assistant Suffolk County District Attorney Elena Tomaro told the court the disposition was reached in part to help Somers’ partner, Alicia Osborne, and their 17-year-old daughter, Lily, avoid sitting through a trial and listening to the details of what went on inside the Dern home on Feb. 5, 2022.

In December, Dern admitted placing Somers, the head caddie at The Maidstone Club, in a “headlock or chokehold” during an argument the night of Feb. 5, 2022, causing him to lose consciousness. Prosecutors said Somers died from a neck compression.

Somers, a star athlete at East Hampton High School in the 1990s who family members said was close friends with Dern, had visited the home to watch a golf tournament on television that day.

Prosecutors previously said the fight was sparked when Dern's wife told Somers to leave because she wanted to put her two sons, ages 2 and 4 at the time, to bed.

Dern's wife told police that Somers was drinking, "getting aggressive" and was "out of control" before the fight, prosecutors said at the time of his arrest. The two men began "wrestling" and the fight escalated, charging documents from last February state.

At his sentencing Monday, Dern apologized to Somers’ family, which filled one side of the Riverhead courtroom, while Dern supporters took up several rows on the opposite side.

“These two groups of people, who mostly are strangers to one another, have far more in common than what divides us,” an increasingly emotional Dern told the court. “And the most significant thing they have in common is that I, and I alone, caused them an immeasurable amount of pain and suffering through my actions.”

Three of Somers’ sisters and a nephew gave victim impact statements, speaking to the emotional toll his death has caused them. They used words like “heartbroken” to describe how they felt, and spoke of the lingering trauma.

Tomaro also read a statement from Osborne, who noted that Somers missed out on watching their daughter graduate high school Friday.

Somers’ family members blamed Dern for not immediately calling for help after the altercation happened.

“Kevin had a right to life and Marc Dern didn’t have the right to take it,” Somers’ sister, Michelle Thompson, said. Her son, Chase Wintjen, added that “the justice system has failed us.”

Collins said people will likely never “fully know what occurred in that house on that night.”

“The remorse that you expressed here today … is belied to some degree by your alleged actions on that night, after Kevin was unconscious,” the judge told Dern. “That causes me to question, to at least some degree, the genuineness of that which you expressed today.”

In a written statement, Dern’s defense attorneys, Andrew Weinstein of Manhattan and Brian Desesa of Hampton Bays, called the sentence “fair and just.”

“[It] validates what we have maintained from the outset of this case — that Mr. Somers’ death, while both tragic and untimely, was accidental and not intentional,” the attorneys wrote.

Dern faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted at trial of first-degree manslaughter, a violent felony.

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.