A Rittman mother, Erica Stefanko, who was convicted on murder charges for the second time after an appeals court overturned her murder conviction in the death of Ashley Biggs was sentenced to life in prison.
She is eligible for parole after 30 years.
Watch the sentencing in the video player below:
The jury deliberated for more than eight hours over two days before finding Stefanko guilty of both charges she was facing.
Under Ohio law, the mandatory sentence for aggravated murder is life without parole, and the mandatory sentence for murder is a sentence of 15 years to life.
RELATED: Rittman woman found guilty in second trial of pizza delivery driver's murder
Biggs, 25, went to work as a pizza delivery driver in Akron on June 20, 2012, and never returned home. Summit County prosecutors claim Stefanko placed a bogus pizza order that lured Biggs to a parking lot where Biggs was beaten and strangled to death by Chad Cobb, her ex-boyfriend and the father of her child. At the time, Biggs and Cobb were locked in a bitter custody dispute over their daughter, and Cobb was married to Stefanko.
Cobb pleaded guilty to Biggs’ murder in 2013. He later implicated Stefanko and became a critical state witness. But it was Cobb’s pandemic-era testimony via Zoom that overturned Stefanko’s conviction. In the first trial, he tried to distance himself from Biggs’ murder and denied killing her.
Cobb wasn’t the only person to implicate Stefanko in her first trial in 2020. The jury also heard from the teenage daughter of Biggs and Cobb, who testified that she overheard Stefanko place the pizza order using a false name. Cobb’s mother testified that she secretly recorded a conversation in which Stefanko admitted to placing the order and said that Cobb wanted Biggs’ skull as a trophy.
Cobb’s friend, Mary Brinkman, testified Stefanko made no secret of her dislike for Biggs. Stefanko said she drove Cobb to the ambush location, Brinkman testified, and later defecated on Biggs’ grave “for all the (expletive) she put us through.”
Stefanko’s defense argued that her contempt for Biggs was not evidence of involvement in a murder conspiracy. The defense tried to portray Cobb as a spiteful ex who implicated Stefanko after she divorced him and married Cobb’s best friend.
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