Jonathan Akin Sentenced To 34 Years In Prison For Stabbing Death Of Girlfriend Autumn Rivera
ADAMS COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4)- The man who admitted to police that he had murdered his girlfriend and pleaded guilty to murder charges in connection to her death was sentenced Wednesday. Jonathan Eugene Akin was sentenced to 34 years in prison for second-degree murder in the stabbing death of his girlfriend, Autumn Rivera, in 2018.
Akin, then 23, walked into the Powell, Wyoming police department on Nov. 27, 2018 and told police he had killed his girlfriend, Rivera, 21.
Akin said he had stabbed Rivera to death in their apartment in Thornton on Nov. 25, 2018 after they had been out celebrating her 21st birthday. He then drove to Wyoming with her body in the trunk. Officers found her body wrapped in a blanket in the trunk.
Akin was arrested and extradited to Colorado.
"The forensic evidence tells us that Autumn was stabbed nine times in the front and back of her torso, that the attack began on one side of the living room and ended on the other, that Autumn fought and tried to escape," Senior Deputy District Attorney Amy Petri Beard told the court. "That it was the defendant's brutal actions on the morning of November 25, 2018 that ended Autumn's life."
Adams County District Court Judge Priscilla Loew sentenced Akin to 34 years in prison, saying that evidence at the scene showed a struggle in which Rivera fought for her life.
"There's no replacing the life that was lost," Loew said in a statement. "She suffered a horrific death and a painful one."