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Jean Terese Keating, 54, shown in Linn County Jail photos in 1997 and 2013. Keating was sentenced to prison on Oct. 7 in connection with a fatal drunken driving crash near Albany in 1997 that killed a Dexter woman. Authorities said Keating fled the state while awaiting trial a year after the crash and was found in Canada this year after bragging in a bar about getting away with the alleged crime.

(Linn County Sheriff's Office)

A former Milwaukie woman who fled Oregon 15 years ago while awaiting trial for a fatal drunken-driving crash has been sentenced to prison.

Jean Terese Keating, 54, was discovered in Canada earlier this year. On Monday, she was sentenced in Linn County Circuit Court to 75 months in prison for manslaughter and three years of post-prison supervision, said Ryan Lucke, a county deputy district attorney. She was also sentenced to 12 months in prison for intoxicated driving; she will serve the sentences concurrently.

Keating's driver's license also was permanently revoked, Lucke said.

Keating pleaded no contest in September to the two charges as part of a plea deal and had additional counts of reckless driving and reckless endangerment dropped. Lucke said the DA's office is satisfied with the verdict, "but no amount of prison time is going to bring a feeling of justice for the victims."

In April 1997, Keating was driving her station wagon near Albany when she sideswiped a two-door car on Interstate 5 near milepost 237. The other car, driven by Jewel Oline Anderson, 65, of Dexter, then careened across the center median and into a Lincoln Continental driven by Noel Kuzma, now 44, of Scio.

Kuzma and his passengers survived the crash. Anderson died at the scene. Keating was arrested and charged but skipped a March 1998 Linn County Circuit Court appearance.

She hadn't been located since, but this year Keating was discovered in a small rural town in Manitoba. Canadian authorities had received a tip that a woman had been in a bar bragging about getting away with killing someone in a crash in the U.S. years earlier. She was detained then deported in April after Canadian police matched her fingerprints with a U.S. database and discovered she was living in Manitoba under an alias.

Linda Anderson, Jewel Anderson’s daughter-in-law, said Keating offered a brief statement Monday during her sentencing and apologized her actions. Anderson said Keating physically looked like her guilt had worn on her “for every single moment she was gone.”

“But, for me, it’s hard to truly believe that she was sorry,” said Linda Anderson, 51, of Dexter. “If she was actually sorry, she wouldn’t have ran or she wouldn’t have stayed gone for so long and would have turned herself in.”

Anderson said she and two other family members read statements during Keating’s sentencing and that they hope to put the criminal case behind them.

“This was long overdue and we knew that whatever the judge felt was fair, we would just have to accept that,” Anderson said. “But it was good for us to be heard by her and to know that we won’t have to wonder if she’s going to leave again.

“She’s finally going to serve her time. And we’ll just live one day to the next and keep our memories of mom alive.”

-- Everton Bailey Jr.