Hacksaw Grandma Gets 15 Years to Life

A judge Thursday ordered a Chula Vista grandmother to prison for 15 years to life for killing and dismembering her elderly roommate.

“I sincerely hope this is a life sentence,” San Diego Municipal Judge Joan P. Weber said to 59-year-old Mary Louise Asbury.

Asbury pleaded guilty in July to second-degree murder after she used a pillow to suffocate Lillian B. Shepherd, whose torso was discovered in front of a Coronado home April 30.

“This is a particularly brutal and heinous crime over a particularly defenseless 79-year-old woman,” Weber said.

Shepherd was killed about three weeks before her remains were discovered. Because she was not strong enough to move the corpse, Asbury told investigators, she used a hacksaw to cut up the body in a shed behind the mobile home the women shared in Chula Vista.

The head and limbs were dumped in a trash bin behind a South Bay supermarket.

During a short statement to the court, Asbury said she was “overwhelmed” by remorse, but Weber criticized her for not having any sorrow for the “unforgivable” crime.

“You are still a very bitter and jealous woman, and you have not accepted responsibility for the crime,” Weber said as Asbury silently stood in her black, jail-issue dress and waist shackles.

Asbury gave investigators two reasons for killing the woman who had been under her care for three years: She felt she was being “treated like a dog,” and she wanted to help Shepherd join her deceased husband in heaven.

“You do not deserve to spend one waking hour outside of prison walls,” Weber said before announcing the sentence.

After the hearing, defense attorney Deborah Carson said the judge may have misunderstood a psychological evaluation, which delayed previous sentencing hearings on two occasions because it had not been completed.

A psychologist found that Asbury considered herself to have been mistreated in varying degrees throughout her life.

Asbury “snapped” because of Shepherd’s abuse, Carson said, and has no recollection of the mutilation.

“It’s like she’s mentally blocking the dismemberment,” Carson said.