Madison man given 40 years in prison for the death of his former girlfriend
What happened in July 2021 - before Gregg Raether piled furniture and other objects atop his former girlfriend, causing crushing, suffocating injuries that ultimately killed her - is known only to one person, a Dane County judge said Tuesday, before giving him the longest prison sentence he could for her death.
Raether, 58, of Madison, who did not speak in court and did not cooperate with a state Department of Corrections pre-sentence investigation, was sentenced to 40 years in prison, all but assuring he would spend the rest of his life behind bars for the death of Patricia McCollough, 55, whose decomposed body was found in her bedroom, beneath a pile of furniture, appliances and other objects, in September 2021.
Evidence presented at Rather's trial, which ended in September with guilty verdicts , indicates he returned to McCollough's home after her death, while her body still lay under the pile, to search for valuables, including a rifle kept in that same room of McCullough's Far East Side home. His shoeprint was found on the screen of a television in the pile.
"The bottom line is, the court is confronted with an act which caused the death with utter disregard for human life, and then a continuing conduct of then literally walking all over the deceased body of Ms. McCollough," Circuit Judge John Hyland said.
"Every time I think about that part of this act I think about when I was raised and we would visit the cemetery and my mother would have a fit if anyone stepped in the wrong place and tread upon the grave of the person we were there honoring," Hyland said. "I can't wrap my head around the concept of what occurred in that bedroom both in causing Ms. McCollough's death and in the actions after death."
Raether instructed his attorneys, state assistant public defenders Erin Nagy and Adam Welch, to limit their brief argument to a request for leniency, an assertion that he maintains his innocence and a statement that he loved McCollough and still loves her.
In September, a jury found Raether guilty of first-degree reckless homicide for McCullough's death. Her body was found by police at her home after McCollough's daughter and others had expressed concern after not hearing from her for months. He was also found guilty of one felony count and two misdemeanor counts of unauthorized use of McCollough's food assistance card, along with identity theft. He pleaded guilty before his trial to a count of possession of a firearm by a felon.
Hyland gave Raether concurrent sentences for all of the other convictions "because frankly, I think a 40-year sentence is appropriate and I don't need to lengthen that with consecutive time."
The sentence was only two years short of the 42 years in prison sought by prosecutors John Rice and Timothy Verhoff, which would have consisted of a 35-year sentence for McCollough's death followed by consecutive sentences for some of the other convictions.
Arguing for the sentence, Rice noted the litany of recorded jail phone calls between Raether and his on-and-off girlfriend Sherri Albrecht, who was a co-defendant on the food stamp fraud charges, which he said had given the jury a sense of who Raether is. Some of the calls, Rice said, had Raether using racist terms to describe people in his life and speaking of McCollough "in some of the most dehumanizing ways a person can be spoken of."
As late as Monday, the day before his sentencing hearing, in calls from jail that were recorded, Raether continued to denigrate McCollough and her daughter, whom he accused of trying to profit from her mother's death and to soak Raether for more money through restitution payments.
"I just want to spit on her," he told Albrecht, Rice said. Raether also called Hyland a "punk-ass judge," Rice said.
"He has proven himself to be a man without a conscience," Rice said of Raether.
'Evil person'
Before Raether was sentenced, McCollough's daughter, Brianna Boston-Kemple, told Hyland of the effect her mother's death has had on her, leading to extensive therapy.
"Every aspect of my life changed when Gregg Raether took my mom away from me," she said.
That began when Raether and her mother began dating - a relationship Boston-Kemple said she didn't approve of - but she said she believes her mother stayed with Raether out of fear, because of the way he abused and manipulated McCollough and took advantage of her addiction issues.
The last time she spoke to her mother was in July 2021, when she seemed happy, but "less than three later she would lose her life at the hands of an evil person who claimed to love her."
She said McCollough's mother, who had Alzheimer's disease and was in a care facility, was never told of McCollough's death because she didn't remember who people were most days and it was feared that if told, she would grieve for McCollough over and over again.
McCollough also never got to meet her only grandchild, born after her death.
"It's my deepest desire that Gregg spend the rest of his days on Earth in prison and will not be able to hurt any other people the way he hurt my mom," Boston-Kemple said.
Albrecht, speaking on Raether's behalf, asked Hyland to take into account the kindness that she said Raether had shown her over the years when deciding his sentence.
Albrecht is serving three years of probation for her role in the food assistance card scheme.
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