MONROE COUNTY, Pa. (CNN) — A woman has been sentenced after her trial involving murder, aliens, and an online cult ended Monday in Pennsylvania.
Sarah Buynovsky has the latest on the sentence.
Barbara Rogers is now facing 15 to 40 years behind bars. A jury found Rogers guilty in March of the third-degree murder of her boyfriend, Steven Mineo.
He was shot in the head at the couple’s apartment near Tobyhana in Monroe County in July of 2017.
“You go back to the scene, you have the victim laying on the ground with a gunshot wound point-blank to the middle of his forehead. So close that there’s burns around the wound, there’s the star pattern in his forehead. Who knows what could happen in 15 years from now when she gets out? Who knows what could happen when she’s in state prison? So we would have liked to see her get more but we understand why she did what she did.”
-Assistant District Attorney, Andrew Kroeckel
Rogers says she wasn’t responsible for the killing.
She said Mineo made her do it by putting her hands on the gun and telling her to pull the trigger.
She claims he was upset because of problems with the cult they were both members of, Sherry Shriner, which focused on aliens and the end of the world.
In court, Mineo’s mother told Rogers she should be ‘put to death immediately’.
Prosecutors asked the judge for the maximum sentence, 20 to 40 years. The defense asked for leniency because Rogers is a mother of three with no prior criminal record and has served in the military.
“We had hoped that the judge would take that into consideration and give her a sentence that was closer to the bottom end of the standard range as opposed to the top end but it is what it is and we have to discuss with the defendant what we’re going to do,” Richard Galloway. Defense Attorney.
The defense attorneys in this case say they will likely appeal the sentence.
