DETROIT – In what prosecutors are calling a "very gruesome case," a 37-year-old metro Detroit man is accused of strangling his live-in girlfriend, mutilating her body and living with her corpse for seven months.
Matthew Gerard Lewinski is facing charges of first-degree premeditated murder, mutilation of a body and concealing the death of an individual in the slaying of Jerri Winters. He was formally arraigned last Friday and ordered held without bond in the Macomb County Jail.
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Assistant Prosecutor Sian Hengeveld told the Macomb Daily that Lewinski admitted he strangled Winters last December during an argument in the living room of his home at the Crosswinds Condominiums in Clinton Township.
Lewinski kept Winters' body in his basement and removed "large portions of her skin from her back," Hengeveld told the newspaper.
Winters' body was discovered on July 28 by Lewinski's sister, who immediately called police, Hengeveld said.
Neighbors whose condo shares a wall with Lewinski's unit told the newspaper they smelled an odor coming from his home for several weeks, but they assumed an animal had died. They say the couple often got into arguments and they sometimes had to ask the pair to be quiet. The neighbors were under the impression that Winters had moved out last fall, and they hadn't seen much of Lewinski this year.
Court records show Lewinski is scheduled for a probable cause conference on August 9 in Clinton Township District Court.
If convicted as charged, Lewinski is facing a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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