SCS woman gets life in dismemberment of son
Mount Clemens — A 61-year-old St. Clair Shores woman convicted of killing and dismembering her adult son will spend her remaining days behind bars.
Donna Scrivo was in Macomb County Circuit Court on Tuesday to receive a life sentence after a jury convicted her of first-degree murder and mutilation of a body. First-degree murder carries a mandatory penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Scrivo, a registered nurse, filed a missing person's report in January 2014, telling authorities Ramsay Scrivo, 32, left their St. Clair Shores home and failed to return. Five bags containing Ramsay's body parts were dumped in early 2014 in St. Clair County, about 50 miles northeast of Detroit, according to authorities. An electric saw was also in one of the bags.
According to prosecutors, Donna Scrivo drugged her son, strangled him and dumped his body in a bathtub. Police believe he was strangled Jan. 25, 2014, the day before his mother reported him missing.
"Ms. Scrivo, yours is perhaps the most heinous crime I've seen in all my years on the bench," Macomb Circuit Court Judge Richard Caretti said Tuesday. "The horrific nature of your offense is mind boggling. Doing what you did to another human being defies belief. You did it to your very own son."
Caretti then told Scrivo she would receive the harshest penalty in Michigan.
"Somehow in your case it does not seem like enough," he said.
Scrivo said Tuesday she and her son were "very close." She also said it would have been hard with her stature to do what she was accused of doing to her son.
"I came to trial hoping for a not-guilty verdict," she said.
Scrivo testified at trial a masked armed man killed him and kept her hostage five days. She told the court: "I'm not mother of the year. I have multiple problems."
Defense lawyer Mark Haddad also pointed during the trial out that none of Ramsay Scrivo's DNA was found on his mother. Haddad also said his 110-pound client couldn't lift the body of her 235-pound son into a bathtub and asked what reason she would have for killing and mutilating him.
During the sentencing Haddad told the judge that since the conviction accompanied a mandatory sentence there was nothing he or his client could say to change it.
Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor Bill Cataldo declined to comment after the sentencing.
Andrea Stamplis and Aundrea Peterson of St. Clair said they attended Scrivo's sentencing in hopes it would provide them some closure. The friends said they found Ramsay Scrivo's body parts on the side of the road as they drove together to pick up their children from school.
"I see a severed head every day of my life." Stamplis said. "I would like to hopefully close the book, put it on a shelf and be done with it."
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The Associated Press contributed.