MUSKEGON, Mich. (WWJ) -- A west Michigan woman has been found guilty of first-degree murder for stabbing her friend and neighbor 188 times inside his apartment two years ago.
A jury on Monday found 61-year-old Pamela Harvey guilty of repeatedly stabbing Curtis Stovall in June 2019. The trial lasted five days.
Family members found Stovall, also 61, inside his apartment at Bayview Tower in Muskegon, Mich., with his hands and ankles bound by rope and duct tape. He was lying in pools of his own blood.
Muskegon County Prosecutor DJ Hilson said the murder was among the most gruesome the area has ever seen, comparing it to another infmamous muskegon murder, according to a report from MLive.
Jeff Willis was convicted of kidnapping Jessica Heeringa in 2013 and murdering Rebekah Bletsch in 2014.
“Jeff Willis will always stick in my head as a guy, a monster, who did horrific things to women,” Hilson told MLive. “But ultimately this one certainly goes right up there with that as well. You don’t very often see somebody tied up like this and stabbed over 100, almost 200 times. That’s significant.”
A knife that Hilson described as a “longer serrated steak knife” was found at the scene of the crime. Harvey’s DNA was found on the sticky part of duct tape that was removed from Stovall’s wrists and ankles.
Hilson said he believed Harvey killed her friend and neighbor because she believed he had information about who had raped her daughter and the identities of some people who had “jumped” Harvey in another altercation.
“I’m convinced that she felt that Curtis betrayed her because he had this information and didn’t come forward with it to her, and that was enough for her to trigger this response,” Hilson said, according to MLive.
The prosecutor said he believed it was possible that Harvey thought she could extract that information through torture, though it was unclear whether the victim actually had that information.
Harvey is due to be sentenced to life in prison without parole on Dec. 1.
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