Judge berates home invader who killed paraeducator ‘for peanuts’ as family says the sentence ‘is not justice’

Left, Shelley Stamp (Casey’s Eastside Memorial Funeral Home obituary). Right, Heather Anderson (WTNH:YouTube screenshot)

Left, Shelley Stamp (Casey’s Eastside Memorial Funeral Home obituary). Right, Heather Anderson (WTNH/YouTube screenshot)

Shelley Stamp was 34 years old when she was found dead inside her Connecticut home nearly two years ago, laying in a pool of blood after being beaten and strangled to death with her own jacket during a home invasion so her killer could get money for drugs. While the woman who admitted killing Stamp will spend up to three decades in prison, the paraeducator’s surviving family immediately came out and criticized the sentence as too lenient for the crime she committed and the life she ended.

New Haven Superior Court Judge Joseph B. Schwartz on Wednesday ordered Stamp’s killer, 36-year-old Heather Anderson, to serve a sentence of 25 to 30 years in a state correctional facility. Anderson in December entered an Alford plea to one count of felony murder for Stamp’s slaying.

An Alford plea is functionally equivalent to a guilty plea in that it results in a conviction, but it allows a defendant to maintain their claim of innocence while conceding that the state has sufficient evidence to convict them at trial.

The sentencing hearing

Prior to Anderson being formally sentenced, Stamp’s mother and sister read emotional victim impact statements, often speaking directly to Anderson, who they say killed Stamp over “peanuts,” according to a report from New Britain, Connecticut NBC affiliate WVIT.

“I hope the look on my sister’s face, the cries of help as you brutally attacked her, haunts you for the rest of your life,” said Laura Tajildeen, Stamp’s sister. “I hope you rot in your prison cell for the rest of your miserable life, and you dwell on the choices that you’ve made, and they haunt you for every minute of every day, because you deserve no happiness and no mercy from the court as you had none for my sister.”

Stamp’s mother, Kathy Daversa, said she fought for her daughter but had “not obtained justice” with Wednesday’s sentence.

“25 to 30 years is not justice for the brutal and heinous murder of a vivacious, caring, loving, young woman in the prime of her life,” Daversa reportedly said. “She must have been so scared. What a horrible way to die. Looking up at a stranger’s face full of rage, in desperate need of money to supply your disgusting drug habit. I picture her horrific death in my mind over and over again. No one can imagine picturing your daughter’s vicious murder obsessively.”

Following the statements, Anderson apologized to Stamp’s family, saying she “didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” per WVIT.

The judge also lambasted Anderson for what he called a “particularly troubling murder” that was “truly and completely random,” according to the Hartford Courant.

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