Sophia Negroponte, 33, daughter of John Negroponte—the first U.S. Director of National Intelligence—received a 35-year prison sentence on Friday for the 2020 second-degree murder of her longtime friend Yousuf Rasmussen, 24, during a drunken argument in a Rockville, Maryland Airbnb.
Incident Details
The stabbing occurred on West Montgomery Avenue after Negroponte, Rasmussen, and others had been drinking; they argued twice that night, and when Rasmussen returned for his phone after trying to leave, she grabbed a knife from a drawer and stabbed him multiple times, including a fatal blow to the jugular. A witness described an escalating scuffle involving punches before she pulled the knife. Body camera footage captured the chaos outside the carriage house.
Legal Proceedings
Negroponte’s first conviction in January 2023 led to the same 35-year sentence in March, but Maryland’s appellate court overturned it in January 2024, ruling that improper police and expert opinions on her credibility during interrogation unfairly prejudiced the jury. Retried last fall without those statements, she was convicted again of second-degree murder (acquitted of first-degree in the initial trial). Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy praised the consistent jury outcomes as just.
Victim and Family
Rasmussen and Negroponte were high school friends; his family described him as a “kind and gentle soul” who brought joy in his 24 years, expressing lasting grief and gratitude for support. John Negroponte, a former ambassador to Honduras, the UN, and Iraq, adopted Sophia and four siblings with his wife Diana in the 1980s.
