Woman gets life sentence in SC cheerleader's death

UNION, S.C. — A South Carolina woman who held down her husband's high school cheerleader girlfriend as he stabbed her to death to prove his love was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole.

Yolanda Thompson cried and asked the victim's family for forgiveness before she was handed the same sentence as her husband, Pernell, for killing 16-year-old Marisha Jeter in January 2008.

"I am not an awful person, but I did do an awful thing," said Yolanda Thompson, who had no criminal record before her arrest for murder.

Friday's hearing was the final chapter of a love triangle that ended in what Circuit Judge Lee Alford called "a tragedy for everyone."

Pernell Thompson began dating the Union High School cheerleader when she was 13, and the two continued seeing each other even after Thompson got married and had a child, prosecutors said.

Yolanda Thompson was jealous of the relationship and asked her husband to prove he loved her, authorities said. The two hatched a plan to lure Jeter to a parking lot in Union and kill her, according to investigators.

Yolanda Thompson held down the girl while her husband stabbed her more than 30 times, prosecutors said. The pair dumped the body into a river and burned Jeter's car.

The teen's father, Manning Jeter, called Yolanda Thompson a "demon" who "stole my baby's life," according to The Union Daily Times.

Thompson pleaded guilty to murder earlier this year and agreed to testify against her husband, who ended up pleading guilty to murder in September. Pernell Thompson, a former football player for Wingate University in Wingate, N.C., was also sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Yolanda Thompson's attorney, Harry Dest, asked the judge for mercy. Dest said his client had cooperated with prosecutors and was the victim of sexual abuse as a child that left her unable to have a healthy relationship with a man.

But Thompson only began talking after she was told her husband had confessed, prosecutor Kevin Brackett said.

The judge sided with prosecutors.

"This was a brutal killing and kidnapping," Alford said. "I see no reason to treat you different from Mr. Thompson."

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Information from: The Union Daily Times