“I’m really sorry. I loved her. She was the only person that cared for me, looked out for me and really, truly loved me unconditionally, and I just feel God awful.” – Clayton Phillips

Clayton Phillips was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Monday after admitting he murdered his 81-year-old grandmother in January 2014.

“I feel terrible, I really do,” Phillips told Geauga County Common Pleas Court Judge Forrest Burt. “If I could do it all over again, I would just change my life and not end up doing what I did.”

He added, “I’m really sorry. I loved her, a lot. She was the only person that cared for me, looked out for me and really, truly loved me unconditionally, and I just feel God awful and sorry.”

Burt called the 19-year-old Phillips a “frightening young man.”

“I’ve only had the displeasure of having one other person like you in this court,” Burt told Phillips. “I’m not a psychologist, a psychiatrist, but I consider you a psychopath.”

And, while there were aspects of Phillips’ childhood that were terrible, Burt said people have experienced much worse and “not ended up where you are.”

“You’re cold, you’re calculating, you’re a very bright young man, and that’s part of what frightens me about you,” Burt said, acknowledging Phillips was under the influence of drugs — including cough medicine and gin — when he killed Ruth Phillips in her Russell Township home.

“But that explains buying the hatchet, doesn’t explain the calendar. That just was liquid or pill courage to get you there,” Burt said.

Geauga County Prosecutor Jim Flaiz had introduced evidence of a hand-written calendar, with the days of the month in blocks, found on Phillips after he was arrested.

In the block for Jan. 20, Phillips wrote, “Kill Gram.”

After accepting Phillips’ change of plea and request to waive all associated fines and court costs, Burt handed down his sentence.

“I am sentencing you to prison for life without parole,” the judge said. “Sadly, you have to be locked up.”

Before his sentencing, Phillips presented as evidence a photograph of him with his parents when he was a child as well as a letter from his mother detailing his mental health issues.

“It’s obvious I have a mental history and it’s obvious I’ve always been breaking rules and not understanding, like, how to act society’s norms. I’ve just made a lot of bad decisions in my life,” he told Burt.

Referring to the photograph, Phillips said he was not a “bad kid,” but instead made a really bad decision.

Growing up, Phillips said he was an outcast and always got in fights, “beating up kids for no reason, setting fires, just doing stupid stuff.”

“I?was always alone, molested a lot of times when I was a kid, and I didn’t really have friends until I was like 14,” he added, explaining his mother often sent him to “mental hospitals.”

Phillips said his father eventually took custody of him and took him off his medicine and stopped sending him to therapy.

“I just found marijuana, I found other drugs just to mood stabilize myself, self medicate,” he said. “Ever since I started that, I just kept going down a downward spiral.”

Burt asked if Phillips bought the hatchet originally intending to use it on himself, referring to a mental health report prepared after the murder.

“No, your honor, obviously I’m going to tell the truth,” answered Phillips. “It was for her.”

Flaiz said the evidence at trial would have shown Phillips planned to kill his grandmother while he was in jail for stealing her car.

“There was quite a bit of premeditation and planning here,” Flaiz told Burt.

About a week before Phillips was released from jail, he spoke with his grandmother and asked her to pick him up from jail upon his release. He made up a story about how she needed to drive him to the Chardon Walmart so he could apply for a job.

“He also asked her to bring some of his Christmas money with her because he told her he had to do a little bit of shopping,” the prosecutor said.

“This was all a scheme that he thought up in jail so his grandmother would pick him up, immediately take him so he could purchase a murder weapon and then he would carry out this crime,” Flaiz explained.

When they got to Walmart, Phillips went to the back of the store while his grandmother waited for him up front. When he learned Walmart didn’t sell firearms, he picked out a hatchet to buy.

Sometime after arriving home, Flaiz said Phillips brutally murdered his grandmother in the basement of her Cloveridge Road home. He wrapped her in plastic and stuffed her into a basement closet.

Phillips then stole her debit card and went out to dinner. He later returned home with his girlfriend and the two of them sat upstairs and did drugs.

“He explained (to his girlfriend) that his grandmother had passed away and left him everything,” Flaiz said. “Meanwhile, she was stuffed in a closet in the basement.”

Anyone who would carry out a murder in such a cold and calculating manner should never leave prison, he said.