A Connecticut Man Wanted Beer and Cigarette Money. So He Broke Into a 93-Year-Old Woman’s Home and Beat Her to Death.

A Connecticut man was ordered to spend up to 85 years in prison for killing a 93-year-old woman during a home invasion.

On May 22, Superior Court Judge Gary White handed Robert Simmons, 54, the life sentence at a hearing in Stamford, the Stamford Advocate reported.

In February, a jury convicted him of murder, home invasion, and burglary.

Simmons was accused of murdering Isabella Mehner, who he had done odd jobs for, by striking her “over and over and over again” and then leaving her to die at the bottom of her basement stairs on Sept. 25, 2019.

According to The Advocate, Simmons claimed to investigators the victim was still alive when he went to the elderly woman’s home to ask for cigarette and beer money.

“Finding her that night at the bottom of the stairs has been impossible to get over,” the victim’s daughter, Ellen Blanchard, told the court at the sentencing hearing.

“She was the one woman who was there for me every day,” Blanchard said. “I’ll never have that again.”

Mehner’s daughter-in-law, Kathy Mehner, called the convicted killer a “coward” for preying on a “defenseless 93-year-old,” The Advocate reported. “I only wish that your punishment could be the same you gave Isabella — six bashes to the head and two broken fingers.”

Judge Gary White said at the hearing, “Obviously, Mrs. Isabella Mehner was well-loved by her family. She was important in the community, and I would say not only does the family lose in this situation, but we all, as a society, lose when someone like Mrs. Mehner, who is energetic, active and cared about people, is lost.”

He added, “These were terrible circumstances in which she lost her life. The killing was brutal, heinous, unnecessary and completely unjustified.”