MONROE — A Green County woman convicted of the first-degree murder of an elderly homeless woman 21 years ago is back in circuit court seeking to hasten her eligibility for parole after serving two decades in prison.
If successful, defendant Mary Sidoff, now 44, has at least a chance at finding herself out of prison on parole in a few years.
In 2009, a state appeals court Thursday upheld Mary Sidoff’s first-degree intentional homicide conviction in the October 2005 shooting death of 88-year-old Ardelle Sturzenegger. She was sentenced in 2006 by the former Green County Judge James Beer to life in prison and would not be eligible for parole until she has served 44 years.
The appeal seeks to reduce that threshold for seeking parole to just 25 years, court records indicate.
According to a new motion filed in circuit court, Sidoff cited the actions of a now-disbarred defense attorney — who worked on her case — for fumbling her defense. The representations of that attorney, Roger Merry, also was a factor in her appeal on her original conviction — but those assertions were rejected in a 2009 decision.
“Specifically, while the sentencing court and parties were aware of Ms. Sidoff’s psychological fragility when this case was pending at the trial level, the reality of her now-disbarred attorney’s coercive and unethical representation — and its toxic effect on Ms. Sidoff during a period of acute vulnerability — only came to light more recently,” said the new appeal motion. “Trial counsel disregarded Ms. Sidoff’s objectives while representing her (and for years thereafter), pressured her to tell the jury a story he’d concocted, and ignored her basic desire to take accountability for the profound harm she’d caused by speaking the truth about Ms. Sturzenegger’s death.”
Authorities said a then 23-year-old Sidoff lured Sturzenegger to the rural Monticello farmhouse she rented with her husband, David, on Oct. 11, 2005. Once there, Sidoff shot Sturzenegger once in the back of the head with a .40-caliber handgun and hid the body in a nearby horse pasture.
She also took about $50,000 from the victim, who was known to carry thousands in cash.
Sidoff was convicted on three felony counts: first-degree intentional homicide, hiding a corpse, and theft.
The new motion, meanwhile, urges the judge to provide the chance for an earlier parole date, and also details how she is suffering from “a rare and aggressive form of cancer” and psychological torment — despite making significant progress in prison at rehabilitation.
“… Ms. Sidoff’s failure to tell the truth at trial was the end result of months of coercion by an unscrupulous attorney who, for whatever reason, committed himself to a fantasy version of the events that took Ms. Sturzenegger’s life,” said the motion. “Ms. Sidoff told the truth when she spoke to police shortly after the shooting, and while she wanted to take her case to trial to clarify that she “did not kill [Ms. Sturzenegger] on purpose,” and “she intended to tell the truth at trial, too.”
Nolen said the state is urging the judge to deny her motion for an earlier parole date.
“The state denies the motion, and requests the court deny the same,” Nolen said during a brief Thursday hearing on the matter before Judge Faun M. Phillipson.
The defendant appeared at the hearing from the Taycheedah women’s prison in Fond du Lac, where she has been serving her life sentence.
Phillipson ordered any opposition to the motion to be filed with the court by December 4; and gave the defense until December 18 to answer with its reply. The defendant is scheduled to appear before Phillipson for a status conference on January 8.
In addition to the mandatory life sentence for first degree intentional murder, Sidoff also received concurrent 10-year sentences for theft and hiding a corpse — five years each to be served during Sidoff’s initial incarceration; and the remaining five years will each be under extended supervision.