A Michigan minister gets 56 years for murder. The former minister of a small Michigan congregation was sentenced to at least 56 years in prison for killing his fiancée’s 24-year-old daughter. The Associated Press reported that his intent was to allegedly fulfill a fantasy to have sex with a dead body.

Isabella County Chief Circuit Judge Paul Chamberlain ordered 55-year-old John D. White to serve from 56 to 85 years behind bars. He said he saw no reason for why White who had two prior convictions for attacking women, should ever leave prison.

White pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder as a habitual third offender in the slaying last October 31 of Rebekah Gay. Police said that White confessed to killing Gay in her Broomfield Township home because he wanted to have sex with a dead body.

White was engaged to Gay’s mother and regularly looked after Gay’s young son while she’s at work, according to a member of the tiny church he led, the Christ Community Fellowship church in Deerfield Township, which is about 60 miles north of Detroit.

Prosecutors say that on the day of the killing, White drank several beers before going to Gay’s mobile home, where he repeatedly struck her daughter in the head with a mallet and then strangled her with a zip tie. Gay’s son who was 3-years-old then, was at home. White then dumped her body in the woods and returned to Gay’s home and dressed her son in his Halloween costume before dropping him off with his father.

Police said that White undressed Gay’s body but could not remember if he had sex with the dead corp.

As authorities searched for Gay’s body in a rural area in Isabella County, 85 miles northwest of Lansing, White asked his congregation of about 14 people to pray for her.

Sally Gay, her mother, said that “for 20 excruciating hours we prayed that Rebekah” would come home. Facing White in court Thursday, the mother told him, “She was not yours to take. How dare you.”

Sally Gay petitioned the court to demonstrate the same lack of mercy White showed to her daughter. She said her family has been devastated by the death of Rebekah, whom she called the family’s “heart and soul,” she also added that it’s Rebekah’s 4-year-old son who will suffer more than anyone.

Church members have said that they were aware of their minister’s criminal past. He was released from prison in 2007 after serving nearly 12 years for manslaughter in the death of a 26-year-old woman in Kalamazoo County, also in Michigan. White has also been previously sentenced to probation for choking and stabbing a 17-year-old girl from Battle Creek in 1981.