A Michigan minister was sentenced to a prison term of 56 to 85 years Thursday for the murder of a young woman that he wanted to have sex with her dead body afterward to fulfill a fantasy of his.

John D. White pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Rebekah Gay on Halloween last year. The minister must serve a minimum of 56 years before even the option of parole.

Gay, 24, had a three-year-old boy and her father was the finance partner of White.

White was engaged to Gay's mother and regularly looked after Gay's young son while she was working, 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 said the minister drank several beers and then went to Gay's mobile home at 2 a.m. on October 31 last year. He killed her by striking her in the head with a mallet and then strangled her with a zip-tie, all while her three-year-old son was home.

The minister then dumped Gay's body in the woods and returned back to get the boy into his Halloween costume. He said he didn't remember if he had sex with the dead body after he killed her. White did admit that he thought she was pretty and wanted to fulfill a fantasy of his, which was to have sex with a dead body.

 "He kept saying he's a bad person, he's a pastor, he felt bad for the people in his church. ... I don't recall him being real remorseful at all with regard to the victim or anything else," Isabella County Sheriff Leo Mioduszewsk said. "He just basically said he was attracted to her, thought she was a very cute girl. It's a crazy, tragic situation."

"For 20 excruciating hours we prayed that Rebekah" would come home, her mother Sally told the court. "She was not yours to take. How dare you."