May 23, 2013
A Bay County woman has been found guilty of killing her elderly husband.
A Bay County jury convicted 48 year old Judy Lynn Gsell of the first-degree murder and robbery of her husband.
Assistant State Attorney Larry Basford showed jurors during the two-day trial that Gsell and Dawn Ross attacked Gsell’s husband, Raymond Gsell, 80, during the early morning hours of Jan. 20 when he refused to continue funding a drug party.
Judy Gsell told officers the next day that when he wouldn’t give them any more cash, “we were fixin’ to kill” him.
Gsell and Ross choked him into submission, then Ross broke his neck. Sometime during the attack, Gsell took cash and bank cards from him and later used the money to buy more drugs and alcohol.
“She asked for money, he refused,” Basford told jurors Thursday in his closing argument. “But that wasn’t good enough. She wanted it, she took it. And in the process, she took his life.”
Circuit Judge Elijah Smiley sentenced Gsell to life in prison and an additional 15 years in prison for the robbery charge.
