65 years, the statutory maximum for a murder without death penalty or LWOP aggravators. Plead insanity, the jury didn’t buy it. They didn’t even find him mentally ill. Just plain flat guilty. Probably the statement to the detective who asked “So she was dead when you left her?” “No, she was conscious, crying, and breathing really hard.”
He killed her on the afternoon of June 30. That spring the legislature had amended the death penalty/LWOP statute to add “burned, tortured or mutilated the victim while the victim was alive” as a qualifying factor. The 55 stab wounds would have constituted mutilation. But that statute didn’t go into effect until midnight on July 1, eight hours after he killed her.
In what context did he say that to the detective? Did he confess? Is he still alive?
Good Lord