Overview
- A Macomb County judge on Tuesday sentenced 42-year-old Matthew Lewinski to life without parole for first-degree premeditated murder and added prison terms for disinterment and mutilation of a dead body and concealing a death.
- Prosecutors say Lewinski strangled 52-year-old Courtney “Jerri” Winters inside his Clinton Township condominium in December 2020 and initially placed her body in a bathtub before later moving it to the basement.
- Over the winter and spring of 2021, Lewinski removed portions of Winters’s remains in attempts to hide and dispose of the body, according to prosecutor statements presented at trial.
- Winters’s remains were found by Lewinski’s family on July 27, 2021 after neighbors reported Lewinski acting incoherently and he was hospitalized the day before, court records show.
- Court transcripts and police interviews record Lewinski admitting he restrained and put his hands on Winters’s throat for several minutes, saying he made no attempt to revive her, and claiming she had told him she was pregnant and had an abortion.