A northern Indiana man has been sentenced to 60 years in prison after pleading guilty for his role in the 2019 torture-slaying of a woman whose body was dumped in southern Michigan.
An Elkhart County judge who sentenced Matthew Murzynski on Thursday ordered that the Elkhart man be incarcerated, for his own safety, in a different prison from two other men awaiting sentencing in the killing of 31-year-old Kimberly Dyer.
Dyer was held in the basement of an Elkhart home for hours and brutally abused before her October 2019 murder. The Columbia City woman’s body was found inside a trash bin dumped and covered in a marshy area near Constantine.
Murzynski, 25, was set to stand trial alongside Donald Owen Jr., 22, and Mario Angulo Jr., 20, in Dyer’s slaying before he pleaded guilty to felony charges of robbery resulting in serious injury and criminal confinement, The Elkhart Truth reported.
Owen or Angulo are awaiting sentencing after being convicted of murder in April during a joint trial in Dyer’s slaying.
Evidence presented at their trial showed that Dyer was accused by people at the Elkhart house, described as a haven for methamphetamine users, as having a so-called “snitch list” of names.
Prosecutors said Dyer was tortured for hours in the home’s basement before Owen ordered that she be “put to sleep” before Angulo killed Dyer by slicing her throat with the glass of a broken bottle. (AP)