MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — A Middletown woman, who was found competent in April to stand trial, was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for the murder of her husband, Warren County Prosecutor David P. Fornshell said Friday.
Bonnie Vaughan, 59, was sentenced on May 4 by Warren County Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Peeler after she pleaded guilty to murder, tampering with evidence and gross abuse of a corpse.
Fornshell said Vaughan shot her husband, 55-year-old Jeffrey Fellman, multiple times at their home on Sept. 19, 2022, and then she asked 33-year-old John Havens to come over the next day to dismember his body.
Police found lots of blood and Fellman's dismembered body within a trash can in the garage of the residence. Police responded to the home after Havens walked into the police department lobby and admitted to dismembering a body.
In April 2023, Vaughan was found competent for trial after the judge reviewed a court-ordered forensic psychological evaluation.
Havens pleaded guilty on Thursday to tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony, and gross abuse of a corpse, a fifth degree felony. He is set to be sentenced at a later date.
Both Vaughan and Havens have been in jail since their arrests. At their indictments last fall, Fornshell said the police's investigation turned up evidence that Vaughan planned to kill her husband.
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