In February 2014, Virginia Tech biology and fisheries double major Jessica Ewing, then 22, strangled her senior classmate Samanata Shrestha, 21, during an evening at Shrestha's apartment. In the wake of the attack, no one could establish a clear motive, and there was no trial, because Ewing took the unusual step of entering an Alford plea on the first-degree murder charge. Alford is a guilty plea with an asterisk — a simple admission that the prosecution has enough evidence to prove the charge. Ewing's side would only come out in the sentencing hearing, which took place over eight hours yesterday in the Montgomery County Circuit Court here in Christiansburg, Virginia.

"I think most people are probably scratching their heads," Ewing's lawyer, Tyson Daniel, told Cosmopolitan.com by phone before the hearing. "Because the only thing that has been presented all this time has been the commonwealth's evidence." And what the commonwealth described in its summary of facts was bleak: Shrestha had invited Ewing over for dinner. At the apartment, Ewing strangled Shrestha, then put the body in a sleeping bag and put it in the victim's car. Her plans to burn the body were thwarted when a friend wouldn't help her. She described this in a damning journal entry as: "Some friend. He fucking won't even help me move a goddamn body … friendship test failed ."

Yesterday, in this small town's tense Main Street courtroom, packed with members of both women's families, Ewing expressed remorse and apologized several times to the Shrestha family in a faint, halting, sometimes garbled voice, saying at one point, "She was an amazing person, and she should still be here today." But Ewing also made sure that they heard her side of the story.

Ewing walked into the courtroom in an orange jumpsuit, shackled at the wrists and ankles, with chains around her waist. Her dark hair was pulled tightly against her head into a side braid that ended at the nape of her neck in a ponytail, and her glasses had dark rims with black and white stripes along the side. She did not smile or look at her family. Sometimes she swallowed hard or rocked slightly back and forth in her seat. For the most part, she remained stony-faced, but at certain points, her face contorted as if she might cry, and when the victim's boyfriend said Ewing had meant "nothing" to Shrestha, she looked down and winced as if in physical pain.

Samanata Shrestha volunteering at the Community Health Center of the New River Valley, 2013. Robert Lambert

During her statement, pulled out of her bit by bit by her attorney, Ewing described a fragile mental state that made her "lose it" the night of the attack. She said she had been sexually abused by a friend's father as a young girl, had been drugged and raped at a campus party by an unknown assailant in spring 2013, and had felt deep conflict around her sexual feelings for Shrestha. She said she had kept these secrets from everyone except for therapists at a local counseling center, whom she told about the rape. In fall 2013, she was depressed and failing classes, and that, too, she kept from her family. "The only thing I know how to do is hide things," she said when explaining the steps she'd taken to conceal the murder. "The only thing I've ever done is hide what I don't want people to know."

"I've Never in My Life Seen Someone So Beautiful"

One of those in the courtroom was Shrestha's boyfriend, Scott Masselli, who was crammed, along with dozens of other people, into the victim's side of the court. (There was considerably more space on the defense side, though 20 or so members of Ewing's family and community did turn out.) "Sam was of course beautiful — I've never in my life seen someone so beautiful," Masselli told Cosmopolitan.com by email. "Sam also had a loving family. Not just her family, but everyone that Sam met loved her. My parents thought of Sam as one of their own kids; Sam and my sister — who is an 'only girl' with two brothers — considered themselves sisters." They had talked, Masselli said, about getting married next year, and he's haunted by a sense that he should have protected her, and memories like this one: "I bought the first gift I ever gave Sam while on spring break after we had been dating for three months. I took a day trip with a friend to Virginia Beach. I bought Sam a turtle that was made out of seashells, with a blue sombrero and glasses; it cost $1. She loved it, and kept it by her bed until the day she died."

Scott Masselli, Samanata's boyfriend, addresses the court at Jessica Ewing's sentencing hearing. Holly Cromer

Meredyth Sanders said in court that she was part of a group of five friends including Shrestha, most of whom had been close since middle school. "She made time for us no matter what test she had waiting in the wings," Sanders said. At a vigil for Shrestha last year, another member of that group, Erin Blakley, told the crowd Shrestha was "devoted, curious, and passionate," but would also dance at the drop of a hat, share plates of brownies, and gossip about boys. Blakley said that in her junior-year orchestra class, Shrestha was voted "Most Likely to Be Distracted by Something Shiny." The prosecution concluded its presentation by showing a video clip of Shrestha playing guitar and singing a song for Masselli.

Ewing said yesterday that she thought of Shrestha as a "golden child" or a "perfect person," a derogatory descriptor she used for someone to whom things came easy. But Shrestha had overcome obstacles. She came to the United States at the age of 3 from Nepal and learned English at school while speaking Nepali at home. Shrestha eventually also became fluent in Spanish, Hindi, and American Sign Language. In 2008, while Shrestha was in high school, her older sister died in a motorcycle accident. Planning to become a doctor, Shrestha volunteered as an EMT in the community, including at the New River Valley Free Clinic, and after her death, friends started a CrowdRise fund in her honor that has raised more than $14,000 for the clinic.

At Virginia Tech, she served for two years as vice president of the Omega Psi chapter of service group Epsilon Sigma Alpha, and before that as philanthropy chair. Jessica Dehn, her friend and the current president of the group, told Cosmopolitan.com by email: "Her constant positivity, friendliness, and ability to make everyone feel included has been missed."

"There Had Been a Kiss Exchanged Between the Two Girls"

The week of Feb. 3, 2014, on one of their daily calls (Masselli graduated from Virginia Tech in 2012 and is now finishing up law school at William & Mary), Shrestha told Masselli that she was going to make dinner for Ewing on Friday. The girls had been around each other three or four times, Masselli said (Ewing said in court it was more like six).

The girls had also kissed once or twice. "Sam's boyfriend was aware that Sam had some interest in finding out what it would be like to kiss another girl," Commonwealth's Attorney Mary Pettitt told Cosmopolitan.com. "There had been a kiss exchanged between the two girls, but he doesn't like the characterization even of 'experimenting.' I don't know how you describe that. It was curiosity or interest. He didn't feel like she was bisexual or not interested in him or anything."

"You would be greatly mistaken if you wrote that Sam had a romantic relationship with the defendant," Masselli wrote in an email. "You would also be mistaken if you used the word 'relationship' to describe their interactions. Sam went months between communicating with the defendant. Relationship also carries a romantic connotation, which would not in any way reflect Sam's thoughts toward the defendant. Sam and I were honest and open about everything. But, this is a murder case. I do not think this is relevant here."

At 3 in the morning the night before the dinner, Ewing texted a friend from her Bible study group: "Tomorrow night is worrisome. And I can't stop this idea. It slowly creeped its way to consume my black heart. I want to … let someone else decide, but I've already etched it in history."

Shrestha's mother, Rajshree Shrestha, said in court yesterday that the family prides itself on being good hosts and believes it is the ultimate treachery to eat food someone has prepared for you knowing all the time that you plan to kill them. Ewing, however, said there was no plan, and that she and Shrestha had been secretly dating. Ewing said the "worrisome" text was about how she was expecting they would have sex that night, something she was excited for but also anxious about. For one thing, she said, she felt she would be cheating on her boyfriend. Also, she said growing up Baptist in the small town of Easton, Maryland, she was led to believe that homosexuality was wrong.

Samanata Shrestha's mother, Rajshree Shrestha, reviewing photos of her daughter and addressing the court. Holly Cromer

"Easton is very conservative and closed," Michele Dappert, a high school friend and bandmate of Ewing's, told Cosmopolitan.com outside the courthouse. "I think Jessica wars between being proud of her difference and being terrified of it, and what it might mean for her life." Dappert described Ewing as a loyal friend and said when another girl spread malicious rumors about Dappert in high school, Ewing stood up for her. She said she knew Ewing had been having a hard time at Virginia Tech, but at a New Year's Eve party a month before the murder, Dappert says Ewing was smiling and putting confetti in friends' hair. "She was talking about feeling freer," Dappert recalls. "She said she was back on track and was looking forward to a fresh start. She said it was going to be a good year."

Beth Ewing, Jessica's older sister, told Cosmopolitan.com outside the courtroom that Jessica had always been a "great" sister. "Jessica had very high standards for herself," she said. "She was generous with her time and money, when she had any — she was a college student." (Photos appearing on family members' Facebook pages the month before the murder show the Ewing sisters goofily modeling their mom's old pom-pom sweaters. They were used to illustrate some of the stories written about the case and out of context make Ewing look maniacal.) Beth said her sister was always happiest in nature. A professor who spoke in court yesterday mentioned Ewing's love of animals and ambition to work in natural resource protection.

"Jessica's never been an aggressive person," her mother, Donna Ewing, a band teacher, told the judge. "That's not the girl I sent to Virginia Tech." Her daughter was in Girl Scouts from kindergarten through high school, her mother said, and played trombone and piano, participating in marching band, as well as mission trips to Turkey and Mexico. Answering a question about all the surprises her daughter introduced in court — shame around lesbian feelings, rape, childhood sexual abuse — Donna Ewing said through tears to the judge, "It just breaks my heart knowing what she's had to endure." As for the effect on her family, Donna Ewing said, "We are devastated. This is a nightmare that hasn't ended."

"I Was Hurt and Upset. I Would Say Enraged … I Loved Sam"

Ewing's only other known brush with local law enforcement occurred in 2012. Students weren't allowed to have animals in their room, but Ewing was keeping a number of pets, including snakes, spiders, a rabbit, a lizard, and a large salamander. When she heard someone was coming to investigate, she hid the creatures in a steam tunnel on campus, trying to keep them warm while she looked for a permanent home. "It wasn't like she was harming animals or they hadn't been cared for," Pettitt, the commonwealth's attorney, said. And yet, Pettitt said, the infraction resulted in her receiving community service and ultimately contributed to her being removed from Virginia Tech's Corps of Cadets (a version of ROTC).

In the Corps, she said in court, she played in the band and for her skill at sparring even earning the title "PT Stud," for being the strongest woman in the group. She said in court that she was ultimately kicked out of the Corps following an accusation around the same time made by someone "who had it in for me" that she had hazed new recruits by pouring water on their faces while they exercised. She said the incident was characterized by her accuser as "waterboarding," but that she'd actually only yelled, "Are you thirsty?" while spraying water at them from a canteen. Expulsion from the Corps, she said, amounted to losing her housing and her social circle. After that, Ewing said, "I felt like a ghost on campus."

Once ostracized from her Corps friends, Ewing said, she spiraled into a depression. It was then that she met Shrestha. Both biology students, they'd met outside a classroom where they had back-to-back classes. They wound up talking about The Lion King, which Ewing said was her favorite movie and which Shrestha said she had never seen. They made a plan to watch the film together, and Ewing described that as their first date.

About two months later, Ewing drove to Shrestha's apartment with a large bottle of Yellowtail wine and a can of whipped cream. She spent a long time getting ready and was an hour late. When she arrived, she said, she was disappointed that Shrestha was wearing yoga pants and complained about it. Ewing said Shrestha then changed into a dress, the same dress found later with her naked body. They then bickered, Ewing recalled, over the proper way to chop bell peppers for the meal — chicken with corn flakes and pasta salad — and everything was off to an awkward start.

Shrestha texted with her boyfriend throughout the evening, and then after a lull, "She hid my phone, sorry. Ha ha. Love you." Later, she wrote, "We're hanging out as friends." The last text sent from her phone was at 12:28 a.m.: "Love you goodnight sorry." It was rare for them not to talk before they went to sleep, so that text was a red flag for Masselli that something was wrong. He called and texted her repeatedly but never heard back.

Samanata Shrestha's apartment. Ada Calhoun

As they drank, Ewing said, they became playful, making a fort out of blankets and having a whipped cream fight. Ewing said they then both took all their clothes off and had sex in the fort. A fight followed, Ewing said, during which Ewing called Shrestha a "whore" and a "spoiled bitch" who had a paid-for apartment and a Mercedes. Ewing said Shrestha then told her she was only an "experiment," and Ewing became "beyond mad. I was hurt and upset. I would say enraged … I loved Sam. I couldn't believe she would be … that I could be just some experiment to her. It hit me where I was most vulnerable. It's no excuse. But I couldn't control it at the time."

In a struggle, Ewing said, they knocked over a hamster cage. Ewing then overpowered Shrestha and strangled her to death. (According to prosecutors, Ewing used a scarf. The defense said Ewing put her in a chokehold, which would mean there was no weapon and would theoretically reduce a sentence according to sentencing guidelines.) Ewing said before the judge that she blacked out, only coming to when she heard the hamster running around. Then she realized that Shrestha was lying beside her, dead.

Masselli, in the hallway outside the courtroom, told Cosmopolitan.com that Ewing's version — that the women had sex that night and that she used her arms rather than a scarf — was absurd: "Who are you going to believe: me or a deceitful murderess who will say anything to get her sentence reduced?" Similarly, Pettitt told the judge in her summation that she believed it was far more likely Shrestha had rebuffed Ewing's advances and that was the conflict that led to the fight. "The sexual activity part also doesn't make a difference one way or the other," she told Cosmopolitan.com later. "In the end what I think is closest to the truth of what happened is Jessica had a lot of expectations of what was going to happen. The evening didn't go the way she wanted it to. What makes the most sense to me is I think Sam probably rejected her sexually."

"What the Hell Is My Future Going to Be?"

At 7 that morning, Ewing called a Bible study friend, Erika Holub, to ask her out to breakfast. Ewing met her at Holub's apartment at 8:30. Holub took her to pick up her car (it had been towed from a lot near Shrestha's house during the night), but shortly after dropping her off, Ewing texted her to ask if they could hang out longer. "My heart is bleeding," she said she texted Holub. That afternoon, around 3:30 p.m., Ewing confessed to Holub that she had killed someone the night before — someone, she said, who was a good person and an EMT.

Holub had Ewing call her parents, and when Ewing was too emotional to talk —she recalled in court that she was only able to scream into the phone, "She's dead! She's dead!" — Holub told Ewing's mother that her daughter had killed someone. When asked for comment, Holub told Cosmopolitan.com in a Facebook message, "During the course of this case, I have provided information to the authorities as accurately and fully as I have been able to recall. I do not have any further comments."

That evening, according to the prosecutor's summary of facts, Ewing asked the man both Ewing and prosecutors characterized as her best friend, Keifer Kyle Brown, to rid her apartment of "dark" books — books about tarot cards and the occult and, inexplicably, a Shakespeare compilation — that she feared might make her look suspicious. She also asked him to pick up a set of Mercedes keys (Shrestha's) and to drop them off with Michael Heller, whom Ewing characterized in court as her boyfriend. Brown did what she asked, and she picked the keys up from Heller that night. Around 1 in the morning, she called Brown again and asked for help disposing of the body by burning it. He refused. Ewing then asked Holub to give her a ride, and Holub refused. So Ewing left the house on foot and moved the Mercedes herself, the body still in the backseat.

In February, Brown was convicted of being an accessory after the fact. "Brown knew that there was a murder, he knew he was helping, but he didn't drive the car or help her move the body, he didn't participate in the murder," Pettitt told Cosmopolitan.com. He was sentenced to a year in jail, though the sentence was suspended. Michael Heller was not convicted: "We dropped his [accessory] charge early on," Pettitt said, "because it appeared he became suspicious something wasn't right but he didn't know what was going." In one particularly chilling moment in court yesterday, Ewing said she believed loyalty was important to friendship. When her lawyer asked if she would move a body if a friend asked her to, she replied, "Yes."

Jessica Ewing listening to her sentence with lawyers Tyson Daniel and Cerid E. Lugar. Holly Cromer

Sunday morning, Ewing showed up at the police department with her parents and a lawyer. The police weren't yet treating it as a criminal case, as it's not uncommon in a college town for parents to report a student as "missing" for a day or two, Pettitt said. But the lawyer advised Ewing not to talk and the Ewings left abruptly. According to Pettitt, "That was when the police realized it: 'OK, we're not looking for her as a suspect, so clearly something else is going on here, and it can't be good.'"

Police searched Shrestha's apartment, where they found evidence of a struggle, blood deposits, and items missing. Those same items were later found in Ewing's car and included the victim's wallet and EMT bag, a Ganesh statue, Shrestha's clothes, and a photograph of Shrestha with Masselli that had hung over her bed.

Ewing was arrested Monday morning at around 3:45 at the Comfort Inn in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she was staying with her parents. Shrestha's car was found where Ewing had parked it. The policeman found the victim's body naked in a sleeping bag in the backseat. In the bag with her were a teddy bear, a frayed orange and maroon scarf, a blanket, and a pillowcase that held a blue dress and a "Relay for Life" cup. She was covered in bruises and strangulation marks.

Ewing said in court that everything she placed into the sleeping bag along with Shrestha had a meaning: the teddy bear was a treasure of Shrestha's, the cup symbolized how Shrestha always wanted to do good, and the scarf she was wearing the first time Ewing met her. She also said she knew it "sounded ridiculous," but that she hoped burning the body would both hide the evidence and provide "a kind of funeral."

On one page of Ewing's journal entered into evidence, she had written around that time, "What the hell is my future going to be? an eternity in prison? Death penalty — off on insanity, mental what the fuck have you done for that goddamn girl."

In the end, Judge Robert Turk told Ewing that it was the journal entries that led him to impose a stiff sentence: 80 years for the murder plus five for transporting the body, to be served consecutively. After 45 years, the rest will be suspended, and she will be released for 20 years of supervised probation. She is to have no contact with the Shrestha family.

Jessica Ewing's mother, Donna Ewing (center), cries as the sentence is announced. Holly Cromer

Ewing stared straight ahead while listening to the sentence. Donna Ewing broke down sobbing. A dejected Tyson Daniel looked down and started gathering his papers. "I am sure you can imagine both Jessica's and my disappointment in the final sentence," Daniel texted Cosmopolitan.com that night. "I hope, at least, it was clear that Jessica did not go with — or ever have — any plan or scheme to do what she did." Meanwhile, the Shrestha side was hugging and smiling through tears. "I am very happy with the verdict," Shrestha's cousin Pravin Singh said on the way out of the building. "It definitely brings closure."

"I went above the guidelines," Judge Turk told Ewing, explaining that the issues about which the two sides had disagreed — whether there was sexual activity, and whether the tool of death was a scarf or arms — were not significant to his decision. "I'm not judging that at all," he said. "What happened after that speaks volumes — specifically, the journals show a great deal of anger, a great deal of hatred, and a great deal of rage, all of which is unacceptable to the community. Your mom hit it on the button: Your actions that night created a nightmare that will never end for everyone in this courtroom. For that, there has to be justice."

Follow Ada on Twitter.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io