CHARLOTTE, Mich. (AP) — A woman has been sentenced to life in prison for her role in the 2002 slaying of a man whose burned remains were found dumped in western Michigan.
An Eaton County judge sentenced Dineane Ducharme on Monday to the mandatory life sentence she had faced after being convicted in December in Roberto Caraballo’s death, the Lansing State Journal reported.
A jury convicted her of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and disinterment and mutilation of a dead body in connection with Caraballo’s death. Michigan law mandates life in prison without the chance of parole for people convicted of first-degree murder.
Ducharme was among three people charged with Caraballo’s death. His burned remains were found in a metal footlocker near a blueberry field in Ottawa County in 2002, but the remains were not identified as those of Caraballo until 2015.
Investigators later learned that Caraballo, 37, had been suffocated and beaten to death in the basement of a Charlotte house in 2002.
Christopher McMillan of Grand Rapids pleaded guilty in October 2019 to second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder in connection with Caraballo’s death. He agreed to testify against Ducharme and her mother, Beverly McCallum, who was married to Caraballo.
McMillan was sentenced to 15 to 40 years in prison.
McCallum was arrested in Rome in 2020 and was being held in an Italian jail as of December 2021, said Eaton County Prosecutor Douglas Lloyd.
