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Man Sentenced For Strangling His Mother With Cord

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Jun 18, 2008 9:47 am US/Pacific

Man Sentenced For Strangling His Mother With Cord

RIVERSIDE (AP) ― A Perris man is going to prison for strangling his mother with a vacuum cord 13 years ago.

Riverside Superior Court Judge Thomas Hastings Tuesday sentenced John Richard Michiels to 25 years to life in prison.

Jurors convicted the 58-year-old man in April of the first-degree murder of 70-year-old Bernice Cooley-Michiels.

The woman disappeared in 1995, but the case wasn't prosecuted until a decade later when Michiels' son Jim told deputies he helped his father get rid of his grandmother's body.

Jim Michiels testified his father told him to shoot the dead woman in the face with a shotgun blast to prevent identification before burying her in the desert. The body was never found.

Jim Michiels was given immunity from prosecution.

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