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REPLAY: Live coverage of Michelle Kehoe sentencing
Dec. 15, 2009 11:00 am
UPDATE: Michelle Kehoe will spend the rest of her life in prison for killing her 2-year-old son Seth and attempting to kill her other son Sean, 7, by slashing both of their throats in October 2008.
Kehoe, , 36, of Coralville, was sentenced today in Buchanan County District Court in Independence. She was crying as she told the court she was sorry and that she loved both her sons.
Her husband Eugene, who also started crying on the stand, said in his victim impact statement that this happened because his wife is mentally ill and he knows she loved her sons. He will forgive her, he said. He also blamed the court system for not understanding mental illness.
First Judicial District Judge Bruce Zager sentenced her to the maximum time allowed by law. The first-degree murder charge carries mandatory life, 25 years on attempted murder and 10 years on child endangerment causing serious injury. The attempted murder and child endangerment will run concurrently but both charges will run consecutively to the murder charge.
Check back for updates.
WATCH: Eugene Kehoe speaks at sentencing
WATCH: Michelle Kehoe speaks at sentencing
Michelle Kehoe glances back toward her husband Gene after she is brought into the Buchanan County Courthouse in Independence, for sentencing on Tuesday, December 15, 2009. The Coralville woman was sentenced to life in prison without parole plus 25 years in prison after she was found guilty of cutting the throats of her two young sons; seven-year-old Sean who survived the attack and two-year-old Seth who died of his injuries, in an attack on October 2008 near Littleton in Buchanan County. (Cliff Jette/The Gazette)
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