Pasadena man gets 26 years to life in prison for murdering the mother of his two children
A Pasadena man who was found guilty of stabbing and strangling the mother of his two children was sentenced to 26 years to life in state prison on Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
Jose Roberto Turner, 49, was sentenced about three weeks after he was found guilty of murdering 31-year-old Lajoya McCoy.
McCoy’s body was discovered on June 16, 2015, almost a week after prosecutors say she was killed.
At the time, Turner and McCoy were separated and involved in a bitter dispute over the custody of their two children, according to prosecutors and Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide investigators.
Prosecutors said Turner had been harassing and threatening McCoy. They say he carried out those threats on June 10, when he brutally killed her.
Family members reported McCoy missing to the Monrovia Police Department on June 12 after she didn’t show up for work and failed to pick up her sister from the bus station.
On June 15, police went to her apartment in the 800 block of West Olive Avenue and found evidence of foul play. The department then sought assistance from the L.A. County sheriff’s Homicide Bureau shortly after.
Authorities discovered McCoy’s badly decomposed body inside her parked silver Toyota Camry the next day, about a mile from her home in the 200 block of West Cypress Avenue.
Turner was arrested on Aug. 27 and pleaded not guilty to murder Sept. 16, according to prosecutors.
This past June, he was found guilty of one count of first-degree murder with an allegation that a rope or cord was used as a deadly weapon.
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