MEMORANDUM DECISION.

 Appeal from a judgment of the County Court of Rensselaer County, rendered July 18, 1978, upon a verdict convicting defendant of the crimes of murder in the second degree (felony murder) and robbery in the first degree.

 Defendant was charged with intentional murder, felony murder and robbery for his part in the brutal murder of Diane LaFond, a young woman found dead by her children in their home at Rensselaer, New York, on November 28, 1977. She had been beaten, strangled and drowned in her own bathtub.  Eight hundred dollars had been [p. 617] taken from her person.

 The next afternoon defendant and his accomplice, Michael Moore, voluntarily made arrangements to talk with the police.  After a period of questioning by a series of police officers, defendant gave a written statement describing his participation in the victim's death.  He was indicted on December 21, 1977 and, following pre-trial motions and hearings, his trial commenced on June 14, 1978.  The jury acquitted him of intentional murder, but found him guilty of felony murder and robbery.  He was sentenced on July 18, 1978 to a term of 15 years to life on the felony murder conviction and to a concurrent indeterminate 15-year term on the robbery conviction. . . .  Defendant . . . maintains that his sentence was improper since the robbery conviction merged with the felony murder conviction.

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[T]here must be a modification of defendant's sentence.  We recently noted in People v. MacDonald, 61 A.D.2d 1081, 403 N.Y.S.2d 337, also a case arising from Rensselaer County, that there is a merger of the predicate felony with the murder under these circumstances. Aside from supplying the transferred intent necessary for felony murder, the robbery was also a lesser included crime since defendant could not have committed the greater offense without additionally committing the underlying felony (CPL 1.20, subd. 37; cf. People v. Graham, App.Div., 419 [p. 618] N.Y.S.2d 290 (1979)).  The prosecutor's novel argument that the robbery is a non-inclusory concurrent count because the force used to commit it was distinct from that employed to cause the victim's death is unavailing.  The difference may have been germane to jury consideration of intentional murder, of which the defendant was acquitted, but it had no direct bearing on the outcome of the felony murder charge since his guilt thereof was not dependent on the amount of force needed to produce death.

 Judgment modified, on the law, by reversing the conviction of robbery in the first degree, vacating the sentence imposed thereon and dismissing the count of the indictment therefor, and, as so modified, affirmed.