A Chilton County judge on Monday sentenced Tonya Vandyke to life without parole for her role in the 2013 rape and death of a woman.

Vandyke, 44, of Billingsley, was sentenced by Chilton County Circuit Judge Sibley G. Reynolds for her guilty plea to a charge of capital murder - a death during the course of first degree rape. Prosecutors dropped another charge, capital murder for a death in the course of first-degree sodomy, court records show.

Vandyke was to have gone on trial August 24.

Vandyke was indicted in February 2012 for the Oct. 13, 2010 death and sexual assault on Tracy Lynn Brown. The indictment states that Vandyke had cut Brown with a knife or knife-like object while Vandyke's boyfriend, James Osgood, was in the process of raping Brown.