Mother, daughter sentenced for killing

An Altoona woman convicted of killing her stepfather and burying him in the coal cellar of the family's Penn Township home in 1983 will serve at least seven years in prison.

Bonnie M. Neely was sentenced Wednesday along her mother, Patricia Sloan, for the slaying of 62-year-old Willis Casteel, whose skeletal remains were unearthed 16 years later by the new owners of the Frye Road home where family once lived.

Sloan, 54, of New Brighton, Beaver County, was convicted of first-degree murder by a Westmoreland County jury in December. Two days later, her daughter, Neely, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder.

In court yesterday, Sloan said nothing when she was sentenced by Judge Richard E. McCormick Jr. to the mandatory term of life in prison.

Neely, 34, of Altoona, Blair County, was sentenced to serve seven to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors had asked McCormick to impose the maximum sentence of 10 to 20 years.

'We cannot avoid the fact you took part in efforts to kill your stepfather, and we cannot avoid the fact you took part in efforts to conceal the crime for 20 years,' McCormick said.

Authorities contend that in October 1983, Sloan and Neely stabbed Casteel about 20 times in the chest, back and shoulder before Sloan shot him twice. The women bound Casteel's body in a blanket and dragged it into the basement, where he was placed in a shallow grave dug by Sloan.

After Sloan and Neely killed Casteel, they told friends and neighbors that he had moved away, prosecutors said. Two years later, Sloan divorced Casteel to further the cover-up.

Sloan moved back to Michigan and eventually relocated to New Brighton. Neely married and moved to Altoona.

Casteel's body was discovered when the farmhouse's new owners unearthed his remains on Aug. 9, 1999, during a home renovation project.

A week after his remains were found, police questioned Neely. She confessed and implicated her mother.

In court, both women told of a dysfunctional family; each fingered the other as the plotter and executor of Casteel's murder.

Sloan initially confessed, but during her murder trial she testified she gave statements to police only to protect her daughter. Sloan maintained that Neely and another person she refused to identify actually killed Casteel.

In a 22-minute taped confession, Neely told police her mother had concocted a series of plans to kill Casteel. Neely once bought amphetamines and Sloan mixed the drug with Casteel's heart medication.

Sloan also proposed chopping up Casteel's body and feeding it to pigs or suffocating him with a pillow, Neely said in her confession.

Yesterday, Neely said it was her mother's idea to kill Casteel. Neely testified that she only participated and stabbed Casteel twice in the shoulder to avoid her mother's wrath.

'If she was willing to do this to him, what was to keep her from doing it to me• I stabbed him to get enough blood on my hands. ... She was in a blind, vicious rage. She definitely would have killed me, too,' Neely said.

Neely testified that she repeatedly was physically abused by her mother and was verbally harassed by Casteel. She described her mother as a violent, domineering woman and Casteel as a 'nasty, crass and rude' man.

'He was rotten and he was vulgar, but he did not deserve to die,' Neely said.

During her 2 &*#189;-hour sentencing hearing, a series of Neely's friends and neighbors from Altoona told the judge that she lived an exemplary life.

District Attorney John Peck conceded that Neely was abused and was under the influence of her mother. It was her cooperation with police that enabled authorities to solve Casteel's murder, he said.

Peck, though, still asked McCormick to give her the maximum sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison.

'Bonnie Neely was a full and willing participant in the death of Willis Casteel. She killed him as much as her mother did,' Peck said.

Defense attorney Dave Caruthers said Neely's involvement was only at her mother's urging. He pleaded for a light sentence because of her exemplary life in the years after the murder.

Neely has a 9-year-old autistic son and a 7-year-old daughter. Neely said she has seen neither since her arrest. Her husband has filed for divorce.

'She ended up losing the only family that meant a damn to her,' Caruthers said.