Court upholds life sentence in ‘vicious’ dismemberment murder
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – The Indiana Supreme Court has upheld a life without parole sentence for the Fort Wayne man convicted of killing and dismembering another man.
In a unanimous ruling issued Thursday, the state’s highest court rejected an appeal from Mathew Cramer.
A judge sentenced Cramer to life without parole after a jury convicted him in the April 2021 death of Shane Nguyen.
Investigators said Cramer admitted killing Nguyen in a storage unit, then worked with an accomplice to dismember the body the next day and leave it in Nguyen’s van.
Detectives also testified during the trial that Cramer and his accomplice recorded the dismemberment on a cell phone video.
His defense team argued to jurors that Cramer was homeless and Nguyen was acting as a sexual predator toward him.
“Considering the vicious nature in which Cramer took Nguyen’s life and the lack of redemptive character, we do not find this to be an outlier case that justifies appellate sentence modification,” Justice Mark Massa wrote in the Supreme Court’s opinion.
Cramer is currently serving his sentence at the Miami Correctional Facility