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Author Topic: Michelle Riley 37, sentenced to 45 years in torture killing in Illinois  (Read 1604 times)
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« on: February 06, 2010, 08:20:17 AM »

IL woman sentenced to 45 years in torture killing


FILE - In this file photo released March 13, 2008, by the Alton (Ill.) Police Department is Michelle Riley. Riley, 37, was sentenced to 45 years in prison Friday, Feb. 5, 2010, for the murder of a pregnant, developmentally impaired mother. Police say the victim was beaten, burned and used for target practice.(AP Photo/Alton (Ill.) Police Department, File) (Anonymous - AP)

Friday, February 5, 2010; 6:16 PM

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. -- An Illinois judge sentenced a woman to 45 years in prison Friday in the torture slaying of a pregnant, developmentally impaired mother, saying the beatings, scalds and gunshot wounds she suffered were beyond anything anyone should have to endure.

Madison County Circuit Judge Charles Romani Jr. was not swayed by convict Michelle Riley's expressions of remorse.

"These were things done to this woman you don't see done to human beings, let alone animals," Romani said in handing down his punishment in the January 2008 death of 29-year-old Dorothy Dixon. "This woman suffered, and suffered greatly. No one deserves to be treated like that."

What Riley and her cohorts inflicted on Dixon, who had been five or six months pregnant when she died, "was brutal and heinous to say the least," he said.

Riley, 37, told the court, "I'm sorry that I can't take it back."

In exchange for Riley's guilty plea last October to a first-degree murder charge, prosecutors agreed to not push for more than 45 years behind bars. Riley's public defender, Jon Delaney, had argued that other defendants contributed to Dixon's demise and pressed for 30 years - the lowest possible sentence under the deal.

Riley, who has three previous felony drug convictions, must serve all of the sentence except for the 700 days Romani credited her for the time she has already spent in jail.

Investigators have said Dixon was abused for weeks, at times beaten with a plunger handle, burned with a hot glue gun and used for target practice with a BB pistol. On Friday, pathologist Raj Nanduri testified that Dixon's body revealed she had been scalded from head to toe with boiling water and had BB wounds "all over the body," some infected and others in varying stages of healing.

Dixon also had a "branding-type" of injury on at least one arm, two of her front teeth were missing and presumedly knocked out, and she had cuts on her scalp that "were very deep, all the way to the bone."

Nanduri said Dixon died of an accumulation of injuries over time.

"In short, her body just quit because of all the beatings, burnings and pellet wounds?" Mike Stewart, a prosecutor, asked the pathologist, who replied, "Yes."

Dixon had been five or six months pregnant with a baby boy, Nanduri said.

Jennifer Tierney, a police detective in Alton, Ill., said police found Dixon's body, clad only in a sweater and covered with towels, in the basement of a house in the city. Police have said Riley and her housemates had banished Dixon and her 1-year-old son to the basement with little more than a thin rug and a mattress on the chilly floor.

Evidence suggested a pot of boiling water was left on the stove almost daily for quick use on Dixon, Tierney said.

Riley was "pretty much considered to be the ringleader," directing other housemates to take part in the abuse, Tierney testified.

Four other defendants, including three teenagers, await trial on first-degree murder charges. Another defendant, Riley's now-14-year-old son, has been sentenced as a juvenile to probation.

Tierney said Riley pocketed Dixon's monthly Social Security checks. Authorities have said Dixon ate what she could forage from the refrigerator upstairs. Riley "basically treated Miss Dixon as a slave in the household," Tierney testified.

Police say Dixon's year-old boy weighed just 15 pounds when taken into state custody after his mother's death.

In arguing for the 45-year sentence, prosecutor Stewart called Riley's conduct "unconscionable" and pressed that Riley encouraged the torture instead of stopping it. Delaney countered that Riley acknowledges "she made a grave error" and accepts responsibility but didn't act alone.
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