GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—A man who plead guilty to beating a man to death with the wooden handle of a sledgehammer repeatedly blamed the victim and interrupted the judge before she sentenced him to 48 years in prison.
Forty-four-year-old Kenneth Wright sometimes wept during a 10-minute speech in court in which he apologized before blaming the man he killed because he “couldn’t keep his mouth shut.” Family members of 52-year-old Steven Burdick sometimes gasped during Wright’s speech.
Wright’s sentence was part of a plea deal. He told investigators he beat Burdick to death by hitting him in the head “baseball style” several times because Burdick allegedly made comments about Wright’s wife. The 2009 beating happened at Burdicks’s home in De Beque.
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Information from: The Daily Sentinel,
