An American was sentenced to 48 years for the murder of a girl. He said that she was looking for a killer on the Internet

In Colorado, a court delivered a verdict in the murder of 19-year-old Natalie Bollinger, who disappeared in December 2017 and was soon found dead in the woods. The convict - 23-year-old Joseph Lopez - said that the girl hired him for her own murder, leaving an ad on Craiglist.

According to Lopez, he saw Bollinger's "I want to book myself" ad and responded with a fake name. The police found correspondence with him on the phone of the deceased - there were more than a hundred messages sent on the day of her disappearance. Lopez said that on December 28 he called for Bollinger and allegedly tried to dissuade her on the way to the forest, but in the end, failing to convince her, he shot her with a pistol that she brought with her. The examination found that the girl also had a potentially lethal dose of heroin in her body.

Lopez was arrested in February 2018. Before being questioned, he told the police that they probably wanted to talk to him about "the girl he used to hang out with on Craigslist." At first, he denied involvement in the murder, claiming that he brought Natalie Bollinger back to her apartment, and she then committed suicide. After reviewing the evidence, he confessed.

Relatives of Natalie Bollinger gave the police different testimonies about her mood shortly before her death, wrote The Denver Channel. According to some, she did not hide that she was thinking about suicide. Others called her a cheerful person with plans for the future.

During the trial, the prosecution stated that Lopez behaved "not like a man, but like a predator", choosing to kill Natalie Bollinger instead of seeking help.

Joseph Lopez, as part of a deal with the investigation, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder - such a classification of the crime allowed him to avoid life imprisonment, which would have been implied by a more serious article on first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 48 years in prison.

The family of Natalie Bollinger tried to challenge the decision, demanding the continuation of the process, but the court rejected such a request. The father of the deceased called the prosecution's agreement with Lopez "a spit in the face of the family" and "a deal with the devil."

Viktor Davydov