Left inset: Kandawaswika Kahari (Franklin County Sheriff’s Office). Right inset: Susan Ramberg (Cotner Funeral Home). Background: Susan Ramberg’s home in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, where her body was found (WBNS/YouTube).
A 22-year-old man is heading to prison for “one of the most horrific murders” that an Ohio judge has ever seen, with prosecutors saying he strangled his 46-year-old girlfriend and then “made a bed” for her to rot in — located inside the woman’s own garage, where the body sat for weeks — while forcing her 10-year-old son to help him.
“He should never have to hug his dead mother, put her in the car with her murderer,” said the family of victim Susan Ramberg at her boyfriend Kandawaswika Kahari’s sentencing on Friday in a statement, according to local ABC affiliate WSYX. “He should never have to play dead while laying in his own blood so his mother‘s murderer will stop kicking him,” the family said, noting how Ramberg’s son was living “in fear” with Kahari and being abused by him for roughly three weeks after her death while she was left in the “bed” to decompose.
“He should never have been left alone in a house for three weeks where he knows his mother’s body is in the garage,” the family said. “He should never have to live in fear, wondering if and when he would be fed by a man who tried to kill him.”
Kahari was given a sentence of 39 years to life in prison for the Reynoldsburg mother’s February 2023 death. He pleaded guilty in December to charges of aggravated murder, felonious assault and gross abuse of a corpse.
“One of the most horrific murders that I’ve encountered while on the bench,” the judge said, according to WSYX.
Kahari was accused of making the “bed” for Ramberg sometime after strangling her, with police saying he left her son alone at her residence for long periods of time in between checking on him and her body, while also feeding the boy.
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Kahari and Ramberg got into an argument inside the garage before he killed her; cops said he punched and choked Ramberg to death. Kahari also attacked the woman’s son with a shovel before forcing him to help make the “bed” for her body in the trunk of her car.
An online obituary for Ramberg describes her as a “devoted mother” who was “kind, caring, empathetic” and “fiercely loyal.” She was said to have “loved her family and friends more than anything.”
Kahari will be eligible for parole after serving the first 39 years of his sentence.
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