Imperial Beach
Navy Petty Officer Robert Nydegger was sentenced Thursday to 25 years to life in state prison for his first-degree murder conviction in the Benedryl-overdose death of his roommate, who was suffering from a degenerative nerve disease.
Nydegger, who was convicted Feb. 20 in a second trial after another Superior Court jury deadlocked on the murder charge, was found guilty of murdering 39-year-old Timothy Cudd and stuffing the body into a refrigerator in the back yard of the Imperial Beach house they shared.
In the first trial, Nydegger was convicted of two forgery charges for writing checks to himself on the account of his dead roommate.
Superior Court Judge Melinda Lasater sentenced Nydegger after rejecting a defense motion to reduce the conviction to second-degree murder because of Nydegger’s alleged mental problems.
Defense attorney Charles Bumer argued during Nydegger’s trials that his client merely hid the body after Cudd committed suicide as a result of the Huntington’s chorea disease he suffered from.
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