A Minnesota man was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Wednesday for the murder of his estranged girlfriend, whose body was never found.
Joshua Dow was to be released from prison in a few months after pleading guilty in 2016 to interfering with Adelle Jensen’s body. However, new evidence led to a murder charge, and Dow pleaded guilty last month.
“I thought that with his destruction of Addie’s body that there was no way that they could’ve proceeded,” father David Jensen told the Star Tribune after the sentencing. “And I am grateful, eternally grateful, that the homicide department kept up with the efforts and gathered enough evidence to make this happen.”
Jensen, who was 25, went missing four years ago. Dow first said she ran away, and then said that she committed suicide, according to the Star Tribune.
Investigators determined that he killed her on Nov. 18, 2015, in Minneapolis. He dismembered her body and placed her remains in dumpsters around the city, according to authorities.
“As a mother, I will never be completely whole again without my Addie,” mother Cinda Jensen said in court, according to the Star Tribune. “I miss her beautiful smile, our hugs and kisses every time we’d meet or say goodbye, and her big, deep, raspy laugh.”
Jensen and Dow were parents to a young daughter.
“She asks, ‘Did mommy eat something that was bad?’?” Cinda Jensen said of her granddaughter, according to the Star Tribune. “Just for a moment, can you think of how this innocent question can rip your heart out? Think about the haunting truth she is going to have to learn some day.”
