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Jury hands OC man life sentence for daughter's torture, death
SANTA ANA - An Orange County man who tortured and killed his daughter was sentenced today to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Clarence Eugene Butterfield, 57, shot his daughter, Rebekah, 21, multiple times on Christmas Day 2006, but the shots did not kill her. He then put her body in a freezer, where she suffocated.
Her body was not discovered until October 2008, when the motor home was towed to an impound lot in San Clemente. Workers found the body while taking inventory of the motor home's contents.
Butterfield claimed he found his daughter dead, then put her body in the freezer because he feared people would not believe his story.
Butterfield was convicted Aug. 19 of first-degree murder.
Butterfield testified he found his daughter dead when he returned to his motor home after running some chores on Dec. 26, 2006. He said he tried to revive her, then put her body in a crate outside his motor home for three days.
He then put the body in the freezer, because he thought no one would believe his story and that, if he had faith, his daughter would be resurrected.
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Some of the jurors said Butterfield hurt himself on the stand with his rambling, sometimes contradictory testimony that drew frequent objections from his own attorney.
"We had a good case beforehand. It got a lot better when he took the stand,'' Deputy District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh said.
Deputy Public Defender Lisa Eyanson said Butterfield insisted on testifying.
"He has the absolute right to testify if he wants to,'' Eyanson said.
Baytieh called Butterfield "Mr. Lies A Lot,'' and pointed out to the jury that in 2003 Butterfield hog-tied his ex-wife, Catherine, and put her in a closet and another time he put her in a bathtub.
"When Catherine was gone, it was Rebekah's turn,'' Baytieh said.
Eyanson argued that an autopsy could not determine if she suffocated in the freezer or when she was shot, because while it is likely she died around Christmas, her body was not found until October 2008, a month after Butterfield was arrested on a warrant from Las Vegas.
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