Minnesota Man Sentenced for Brutal Murder of a 19 Year Old Woman

MOORHEAD, Minn. (AP) — A Moorhead man has been sentenced to 30 ½ years in prison for the murder of a 19-year-old woman who prosecutors say was killed and dismembered.

KFGO radio reports 28-year-old Ethan Broad was sentenced on Friday. He earlier pleaded guilty to second-degree murder with intent, punishable by up to 40 years in prison.

Authorities in western Minnesota recovered the woman’s remains from a landfill in late April 2020. Dystynee Avery’s worried mother reached out to police earlier in the month to say she hadn’t heard from her daughter.

According to the criminal complaint, Broad confessed to killing and dismembering Avery, but he said it was an act of self-defense. The complaint says he cut up her body with a saw, put the remains into garbage bags and dumped them in bins near his apartment in south Moorhead, near the border with North Dakota.

Broad initially told investigators that someone else had hit Avery over the head with a lead pipe and cut her throat, but later admitted that he killed and dismembered the woman.

Broad told police at the time that Avery had lived with him for a short time but that she had removed her belongings from his home.