A 47-year-old man was sentenced Thursday to serve 50 years in prison for stabbing a 54-year-old woman to death in November 2019 and then setting his car on fire with her body inside.
Trevor Babcock, 42 at the time, told detectives that Jackson was “being mean” to him and tried to stab him as she drove his Cadillac Escalade so he turned the knife on her while sitting in the back seat of the car, according to prior reports. Babcock then drove the car to a neighborhood near Cheney Lake Park in Northeast Anchorage and set it on fire, prosecutors say.
About 20 of Jackson’s family members attended a sentencing hearing in Anchorage Superior Court on Thursday, according to assistant district attorney Luba Bartnitskaia. In a plea agreement filed in January, Babcock agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for the dismissal of other charges against him including first-degree murder, arson and evidence tampering.
Superior Court Judge Jack McKenna referenced the “seemingly unprovoked” attack before handing down the sentence of 70 years with 20 years suspended, as well as 10 years of probation to follow, Bartnitskaia said Friday. The prosecutor said she had requested a sentence of 60 years to serve and Babcock’s attorney had requested 20 years to serve.