FOREST LAKE - A Forest Lake man who choked and stabbed his girlfriend to death and then stayed with her body until a neighbor noticed the smell has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
Lauren Mason Grove Lynch, 27, is expected to receive a 30-year prison sentence, according to Washington County Attorney Pete Orput.
Lynch was arrested the evening of Sept. 11 after a neighbor in his 12th Street Southwest apartment building called to report what smelled like a dead body. Lynch at first refused to let Forest Lake police inside and told them his girlfriend was at work.
Eventually, however, he “came out of the apartment and placed his hands out indicating he should be handcuffed, and said, ‘She’s inside,’ “ a police investigator wrote in a criminal complaint. The body of Lynch’s girlfriend, Grace Van Norman, 36, was inside, covered by blankets.
Lynch later told investigators he had killed Van Norman three nights earlier, Sept. 8, after a heated argument, according to the complaint. He said he punched her, tried to strangle her, used a pillow to suffocate her and then stabbed her several times.
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Lynch pleaded guilty Friday to the original charge against him, second-degree intentional murder, and agreed to a sentence of 367 months in prison.
