Man who told cops he sliced and diced girlfriend like she was pot roast found guilty of murder, will spend life in prison. A Michigan man will spend life in prison for beating and strangling to death his girlfriend before chopping up and skinning her body to hide the evidence. William Dhondt, 29, was found guilty of first degree murder Friday in the grisly 2013 killing of Kaitlin Hehir, 29, in the Farmington home they shared. It took the jury only three hours to reach a verdict. The convicted killer told investigators in a taped interrogation played for the jury during his trial that he ‘sliced and diced’ Hehir’s corpse ‘like she was pot roast or some s**t,’ according to The Oakland Press. At least one member of the jury was crying as the Dhondt’s guilty verdict for the Feb 23, 2013 slaughter of Hehir was read aloud, according to the Detroit Free-Press. He showed no emotion. The murder was so horrific, and the evidence so graphic, that jurors are going to be provided counseling by the court after the week-long trial, according to the paper. Hehir’s family was present for the verdict, and more than one friend found satisfaction in hearing the word guilty before seeing the killer led out of the courtroom. ‘Sweet angel… he won’t ever hurt anyone again,’ Hehir’s friend Maria Ellis wrote on Facebook in the hours after trial wrapped. ‘Justice was served,’ another friend commented. Investigators showed up at the couple’s Farmington home the day after the murder when Dhondt called to report her missing – they soon obtained a search warrant and found her remains scattered throughout the house, jurors were told. The killing happened only one week after a glowing Hehir wrote on Facebook of her love for her soon-to-be killer on Valentines Day. Flowers and strawberries?!? She posted. Im a very lucky girl. Thank you to my amazing boyfriend! The wicked depravity of the death only came to light when he admitted his guilt to police in the shockingly graphic confession played in court. Dhondt told detectives he and Hehir became embroiled in a fight when she became upset after having to leave a party to pick him up at work. She had been drinking and was throwing up when they returned, he tried to give her a glass of water – she responded to the gesture by kicking him in the groin, he recalled. Then he snapped, ‘I f*****g laid her out,’ he bragged. ‘The defendant described hitting Kaitlin in the face with a glass cup, causing her to hit her head on a dresser and fall to the ground,’ Farmington Police Detective Andrew Morche said during Dhondts arraignment last year, according to Michigan Live. ‘She cracked her head on the dresser, and she was out, and that’s where I freaked out,’ he continued. ‘The defendant got on top of Kaitlin and hit her multiple times in the face with his fist, causing her to bleed from the nose and mouth,’ Morche continued. ‘I didn’t know where this was going to end, and I was an idiot,’ he told investigators. ‘The defendant slammed Kaitlins head into the floor repeatedly, causing her to bleed form her head,’ Morche testified. ‘The defendant then used his hands to strangle Kaitlin to death while she struggled and fought for her life.’ ‘I choked her, to make sure,’ he told cops. Dhondt described how Hehir’s lifeless body lay on the floor for nearly two hours while he tried to figure out how to proceed. ‘Then my mind went off — ‘Let’s get rid of it.’ He dragged Hehir’s corpse to the basement and chopped it into pieces that he then stuffed in garbage bags, police said. ‘I took care of that and went to bed. I woke up, said ‘That’s not going to work,’ so I skinned her,’ Dhondt admitted, ‘removed flesh.’ Prosecutor Tricia Dare told jurors in graphic detail how he skinned the already mutilated body with an X-Acto knife and then went about removing the muscles before using a power saw to get through bones. ‘He tried to use a sawsall,’ she said, according to Macomb Daily. ‘Can you imagine what that must have been like, to use an X-Acto knife to cut the flesh of another human being? ‘And when he got to the bone, he got out a saw.’ Dare said Dhondt removing skin and muscles from Hehir’s arms was ‘like she’s an animal that he just hunted out in the woods.’ ‘He talks about it like it’s nothing — ‘Well, that way I can put it in the garbage and people will just think it’s salmon. … It’s not salmon. That’s a person,’ Dare continued. Displaying a total lack of awareness to the sorrow felt by his victim’s loved ones, Dhondt actually told police the aftermath ‘sucks’ because ‘it was probably four minutes of the worst thing that ever happened to me.’ Dhondt and his lawyer tried to paint Hehir as a cruel, belittling woman who often abused him, leading to the brutal slaying. The attorney pleaded in her closing statement for him to be convicted of voluntary manslaughter. He was found guilty of first-degree murder only hours later. The conviction carries a mandatory life sentence in Michigan which will be formally announced during an April 18 hearing. It is not clear if Dhondt will appeal the verdict, but his attorney told reporters gathered outside the courtroom the decision shocked her.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 12:55:03 +0000
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