A Jersey Shore woman will spend the rest of her life behind bars for the murder and dismemberment of her husband, whose remains she kept in a closet for years after his slaying.
"What she did to my brother is what a butcher does to animal," said Raymond Wantorcik in court Wednesday. "It’s killed. It’s bled out. It’s disemboweled and it’s chopped up. My brother was not an animal, yet, he was butchered like one."
Loretta Doyle Burroughs, 63, of Ventnor, was sentenced Wednesday to 55 years in prison as Daniel Burroughs relatives watched in court.
"I pray, I pray that my sins today will give some type of peace for those that have been damaged," said Burroughs while learning her fate.
The victim's family members called the woman, who is a grandmother, a monster as she tearfully accepted responsibility between comments alluding to the possibility that she was a victim of abuse.
"My brother never, ever raised a hand to another person and would absolutely never raise a hand to another woman," said Wantorcik outside the courtroom.
Burroughs, who will turn 64 next month, must serve at least 47 years of her sentence.
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After a four-day trial in March, an Atlantic County jury found Burroughs guilty in the 2007 stabbing death of her husband, 66-year-old Daniel Burroughs inside their then home on Leipzig Avenue in Mays Landing. The jury also found her guilty of hiding her husband's remains.
Authorities said after slaying her husband in the couple's Mays Landing home in 2007, the woman stuffed parts of the man into two containers.
She spent the next six years telling people her husband had left her, meanwhile storing his remains in her home. She even moved with the containers several times, prosecutors said.
"I am sorry for my crime and I’m ready to accept the responsibility," Burroughs said.
In 2013, crime scene investigators found the remains while inside Burroughs' Ventnor home while executing a search warrant for documents related to an embezzlement case. They found the containers in a closet.
"From what I understand, they were there to look for some bank records for embezzlement," said Danny's daughter, Caroline Burroughs. "They weren't there looking for my father. They just stumbled upon him."
Burroughs was found guilty of murder and hindering her own apprehension.
She also put children in danger, according to the mother of a friend of Burroughs' grand daughter who said that Burroughs let the girl "sleep in a room with the dismembered body in the closet."
Burroughs said she hoped her sentence would bring closure to her husband's family.
"She’s a sociopath and she’s going to die behind bars where she deserves to be," said Wantorcik.
