Inset: Kimberly Osborne (McCulla Funeral Home). Background: Joseph Nevera, center, during his sentencing for killing Osborne in West Virginia (WDTV).
A West Virginia man will spend the rest of his days behind bars for following through on his threat to put his girlfriend “in a grave” when he strangled her to death and buried her in the woods.
Joseph Nevera, 51, was sentenced to life in prison after his first-degree murder conviction in the death of 48-year-old Kimberly Osborne near Morgantown. He was sentenced without mercy, which means he will not be eligible for parole.
Osborne disappeared on Mother’s Day 2024. It took six months for deputies with the Monongalia County Sheriff’s Office to locate her body buried in a shallow grave not far from where she lived with Nevera. Cops arrested Nevera a couple of weeks later.
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According to a courtroom report from local CBS affiliate WDTV, a key witness at trial testified that Nevera had previously threatened to kill Osborne and said he would choke her to death so she would “end up in a grave or a hole in the ground.” He was furious that Osborne was planning to leave him, prosecutors said.
After killing Osborne, Nevera showed her body to his friend John Claburn. Her body was in the passenger seat of a Silverado truck.
“I killed her,” Claburn recalled Nevera telling him, per the Dominion Post. “You gotta help me.”
“Joe, this isn’t good,” he reportedly told his best friend.
The two drove to a remote area where Nevera buried the body as Claburn stood watch. Claburn was convicted of accessory after the fact.
Osborne’s mother testified she held out hope that her daughter may still be alive as the search for her continued. But those dreams were dashed when cops showed up at her doorstep to tell her they had found her body.
“She was my child,” she reportedly testified. “She was my baby. And I’m angry.”
Osborne, a mother of three, was known for her “boundless generosity and joyful spirit.”
“Kimberly’s presence was a light that guided many through times of darkness,” her obituary reads.
The post Man who warned girlfriend she would ‘end up in a grave’ was accurate in his prediction — and is now going to prison first appeared on Law & Crime.
