Caretaker Gets Max Sentence In Pleasant Hill Woman's Death
PLEASANT HILL (CBS / AP) -- An at-home caretaker convicted of killing her 70-year-old client is headed to prison for 31 years to life in prison.
A Contra Costa County judge gave Diane Warrick the maximum term for the second-degree murder. During Thursday's sentencing, Judge Leslie Landau said "this defendant is one of the most dangerous I've seen."
Prosecutors say retired social worker Mary Jane Scanlon hired Warrick through a Craigslist ad, unaware that the woman had a criminal past. She was convicted of robbing a Colorado pharmacy in 1988, then committed to a mental hospital for four years after taking hostages and shooting at police at a Napa pharmacy in 1997.
Last June, Warrick repeatedly stabbed the 85-pound Pleasant Hill woman in her bed. She testified at trial that she was hallucinating about attacking her father at the time.
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