Killer gets 48 years :: News Sun :: News
Minutes before Adam Christenson was sentenced for the murder of Grant High School student Elizabeth Willding, prosecutor Michael Mermel urged the judge to be swift and stern.
“We have to protect the people from Adam Christenson so they won’t feel the same pain as the Willding family does right now,” Mermel told Judge James Booras Monday. “You are the only person on the face of the earth who can do that.”
Liz Willding (with flowers) is pictured with her family in this March 2004 photo.
Christenson, 25, sat emotionless next to his attorneys after he was ordered to 48 years in prison.
He will serve the term without any chance of an early release.
“Nothing will mend the wounds these two families feel,” Booras said. “It is a tragedy for the Willding family and the family of the defendant. He took a talented person away from the world, and he must be punished.”
The Ingleside man did not plead guilty, but he admitted in court Feb. 5 that the evidence against him was strong enough to convince a judge or jury.
With that plea, he avoided a trial.
Defense attorney Keith Grant had argued that Christenson was in a poor mental state when he killed Willding on July 14, 2004, and that his confession should be suppressed .
He was found unfit to stand trial and was sent to a state mental health facility before being found fit by a doctor last April.
On July 13, 2004, Christenson and co-defendants Melissa Ward and Daniel Rowe entered the Willding home in Ingleside. They stole a video camera and an Xbox game system, intending to sell them to buy drugs .
The next day, Christenson returned to the house to retrieve a cord needed to operate the camera. However, Willding, 16, was at home and was stabbed more than 40 times during an apparent struggle.
Her mother, Gigi Willding, has said she has not been able to recover physically or emotionally.
She and her fiancé, Scott Pregent, have been in counseling twice a week since the murder.
“It’s been terrible. Liz was the glue that held the family together,” she said. “I think about her every day and what I could have done differently to save her.”
Christenson’s father, Daniel, testified that he could not have imagined the boy who excelled in sports and academics, could one day be a killer.
“Adam was everything you could want in a son,” he said amid tears. “I’ve always thought we did a good job with him, but apparently we did not.”