DETROIT, Nov. 18 -- Two women whose father killed their mother and hid her body in a freezer for three years got their wish Friday when a Detroit judge cut the man's sentence in half. Leonard Tyburski, 51, of Canton Township, Michegan, had his sentence reduced to 9 to 25 years after his daughters told the judge a long sentence would only prolong their grief.
Tyburski, who has already served five years of a 20- to 40-year sentence, apologized for the crime that shocked the world after one daughter pried open the locked basement freezer in 1989 and found Dorothy Tyburksi's body. Recorder's Court Judge Dalton Roberson's ruling came after he read aloud a letter from one daughter, 21-year-old Kim. 'I loved my mother very much, but a jail term of 20 years will not bring her back,' she wrote. 'It is no solace to me, and it just brings more grief.' The daughter also said she would welcome the return of Tyburski. She called him 'a good father.' Prosecutors said Tyburski could be paroled in three years. The Michigan Supreme Court sent the case back to Recorder's Court after throwing out Tyburski's conviction on a technicality. The crime was reported worldwide, in part because the daughter who found the body had dreamed her mother was trapped inside the freezer. Tyburski killed his wife after he learned she was having an affair. Tyburski slammed his wife's head against a basement metal post 11 times, then locking the body in the freezer. To explain the woman's disappearance, he told the daughters she left after an argument.
