Background: Matthew Lewinski at his sentencing (Law&Crime). Inset: Courtney "Jerri" Winters (Facebook).
A Michigan man who murdered his ex-girlfriend and kept her remains in the basement of his condo has been sentenced to life in prison.
Matthew Lewinski, 42, learned his fate at his sentencing hearing on Tuesday after he was found guilty of first-degree murder, disinterment and mutilation of a dead body, and concealing the death of an individual. The victim was his former girlfriend, 52-year-old Courtney "Jerri" Winters, whose remains were found in the basement of Lewinski's condo in Clinton Township, Michigan, in July 2021. Lewinski strangled her to death in an armchair in his home in December 2020 after they had an argument.
Law&Crime was in the courtroom, where Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Rachel Rancilio told the court, "I have never seen anything like this."
As Law&Crime previously reported, prosecutors said the former couple had been broken up for about a month when Winters unexpectedly showed up at the condo and told Lewinski that she had an abortion.
Winters sat down in an armchair while Lewinski made tea for her in the kitchen. The former couple got into a verbal argument that escalated into a physical altercation. Winters purportedly bit Lewinski, who then strangled Winters until she went limp.
On July 27, 2021, the condo association contacted Lewinski's sister, Debra Federico, because the unit's lights were on, but no one was home. At that time, Lewinski was in the hospital after being found wandering the property in his underwear. Federico told the court that she and her family were looking for a ceramic Christmas decoration and used the opportunity to enter the condo to find it.
Instead, they found human remains in the basement. The family called police, who confirmed that there were decomposing human remains of a woman in the condo's basement; the mutilated body was nude, lying on its stomach, and some of the skin appeared to have been removed.
Lewinski confessed to killing Winters when police interviewed him in the hospital.
Winters' brother, Jeremy Winters, told the court, "A piece of us was taken by Matthew."
Rancilio had much harsher words for Lewinski, who declined to speak at his sentencing. The judge told Lewinski, "Even after what you did, it was the aftermath of what you did. The hole and the trauma that you've created in this family is … I've never seen anything like it. They have to live with this now, knowing that their loved one was treated in this fashion postmortem, and that you caused it. You caused her death."
She added, "I don't know where that lack of humanity comes from. I don't know how you can live knowing that you have done this to someone in this kind of heinous, horrendous way."
Lewinski was sentenced to life in prison without parole plus 23 to 120 months for the disinterment charge. He was ordered not to have any contact with the Winters family.