BUTLER COUNTY, Ohio -- A Middletown woman has been sent to prison for dumping a woman’s body in the woods after her overdose last summer, WCPO media partner the Journal-News reports.
Erica Robinson, 32, pleaded guilty in March in Butler County Common Pleas Court to tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony. A second charge of gross abuse of a corpse, a lower felony, was dismissed.
On Monday, Robinson was sentenced by Judge Michael Oster to 18 months in prison.
Robinson was the second person to go to prison for the crime.
In February, co-defendant Joshua Swenson, 28, took the same plea deal and was also sentenced to 18 months in prison. Both faced a total of 36 months in prison.
Both Robinson and Swenson told Middletown police that Leslie Dalton, 20, of Middletown overdosed in their Wilbraham Road house, and they waited until night before putting her body in a wheelbarrow, covering it with a sheet and then pushing it across the street to a wooded area.
Dalton, who had reportedly been missing since July 27, was found dead in a dry creek bed Aug. 13. Her body was badly decomposed, police said.
Dalton, who attended Middletown City Schools, had a drug problem, her mother previously told this news outlet.
After Dalton was released from jail, she was “doing so good,” her mother Rebecca Charlton previously said.
Then she returned to drugs.
“She made a mistake and relapsed,” her mother said. “Once she got a taste of it, it was back on.”
