The man who pleaded guilty in the beating death of his landlord in 2011 has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
47-year-old Terrence Cram was sentenced to 25 years for murder, five years for tampering with evidence and five years for fraudulently using a credit card in the beating death of 49-year-old Tena McNeely. The two five-year sentences are to be served concurrently.
The defense attorney reminded the judge that Cram was very cooperative at time of his arrest and has a lack of criminal history besides this incident. He asked the court for the lowest possible sentence of 20 years.
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“No sentence will take away the pain this family is feeling,” said the judge.
Cram will be eligible for parole after 85 percent of the sentence is served. Cram pleaded guilty to the charges in April.
Police say Cram beat McNeely to death in January 2011 at their Anderson County home, where the victim’s family says Cram rented a room for about five years. Police say Cram was also using McNeely’s credit cards for six months in several states after her death.
In a handwritten statement obtained by LEX 18, Cram says he only killed McNeely because she begged him to do so. He claims in the four-page letter he found McNeely at the bottom of the stairs after a bad fall that day and when he was going to call 911, “she yelled no!”
“She said she couldn’t move her left leg and the rest of her body was wracked in pain” he wrote. “Please, please kill me! I can’t and won’t live like this,” she said, according to his statement.
In graphic details Cram described how he hit her repeatedly until she stopped moving. “I had to stop her pain” he wrote.
Police arrested Cram in Arizona six months after the victim was found dead in her home.
Tena McNeely was the daughter of state Trooper James McNeely, who died in the line of duty during a flood rescue in Frankfort in 1972.
