Murderer sentenced to 25 years in prison
BROOKSVILLE –
After finishing her troubled life’s story of rape and abuse, Treva Anderson looked up from her statement at the judge.
“I get sick to my stomach when I think about his death,” she said. “I didn’t want this to happen.”
But, she added, “I’m here to take responsibility.”
All eyes turned to Circuit Judge Stephen Rushing.
Rushing hesitated, then delivered his sentence in a slow and measured voice. This is a tough case, he acknowledged, but neither does the victim’s family deserve to lose a parent in this way.
With that, he ordered Anderson, 24, to serve 25 years in prison for the second-degree murder of Robert “Bunky” Rutherford. It was five years shy of the 30-year sentence allowed under her plea deal and requested by the prosecution and Rutherford’s family.
The sentence came after more than an hour of testimony on Friday that provided some context for the first time around the death of Rutherford. The 69-year-old welder was found dead in his Main Street apartment on Feb. 14, 2008.
Police later determined that he had been bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher and strangled with an extension cord. Anderson was the first to admit in court she “overreacted.”
Anderson’s attorney, Tricia Jenkins, also recognized that for most people it would be an “extreme” action. But she set out to prove on Friday that her client was at least partly justified.
“She started out in vitro in a bad situation,” Jenkins said.
Anderson’s foster mother, Gloria Lamagno, detailed Anderson’s early life, beginning with her alcoholic mother. Anderson and her siblings bounced around from state to state with her mother and boyfriend, hitchhiking for rides.
When the Department of Children and Families finally caught up with her, Anderson’s mother secured a visitation with her children.
She passed the girls through a bathroom window to her boyfriend and began the cross country wandering again.
Finally, Anderson wound up with Lamagno – her biological second cousin – in New Jersey at age 3. Lamagno took her under her wing for as long as she could, but Anderson had a wild streak.
When Anderson picked up the story in court, she put it this way:
“I was on a mission to rid myself of the pain.”
As a teenager, Anderson was raped on two occasions. She got pregnant and was forced to give up the child for adoption. Later she would move to Florida, where she wandered from place to place with different boyfriends, trying to hold down a job.
Eventually she met Rutherford in Brooksville and the two became friends. On Feb. 13, 2008, she was at his apartment, sleeping in his bed to rest for a night job.
She woke up with him attempting to assault her, which, given her background, triggered a fierce reaction.
“I did what I felt I had to do to get out,” Anderson said.
Reporter Kyle Martin can be reached at 352-544-5271 or [email protected].
