POMEROY — Meigs County resident Paula Rizer will serve at least 17 years in prison for murdering her husband, Kenneth.

At her sentencing hearing Wednesday morning, Meigs County Common Pleas Judge Fred W. Crow III sentenced Rizer to the mandatory life sentence, but she could be paroled in 15 years. However, Rizer must first serve three years mandatory time in prison for a firearms specification. She will receive credit for 293 days she served in the Washington County Jail.

A jury convicted Rizer of murder Tuesday. It was the second jury to hear testimony against and from the 51-year old murderess relating to the 2009 death of her husband. He was found dead in his recliner in the couple’s Lovett Road home in Lebanon Township. He was hit by five bullets, at least three of which were fatal.

After Wednesday’s sentencing, Prosecuting Attorney Colleen Williams said she believed Rizer shot her husband in his chair. However, she and Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Matthew Donahue did not present a specific scenario of the circumstances at either trial, instead presenting forensic evidence and testimony from agents of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation to present physical evidence, two taped interviews with the murderer in which she made no self-defense claims, and Rizer family members who testified to a peaceful family history.

In her second trial, Rizer said her husband had threatened to paddle her, as she alleged he had done before, that she felt in physical danger and fired the first shot in order to distract him. In her first trial, which ended in an acquittal on aggravated murder and a deadlocked jury on a murder charge, Rizer was emotional and tearful, but did not mention the paddle or its use by her husband, or all of family issues they had been dealing with at the time she killed her husband.

“We were glad to help the Rizer family,” Williams said. “We could not have done so without the diligent work of the Ohio BCI agents who worked on the case. All of us who worked on behalf of Mr. Rizer and his family are pleased with the outcome.”

Rizer’s daughter-in-law, Melissa, whose son first responded to Paula Rizer’s frantic telephone call, spoke to Crow on behalf of the victim’s family. She said that telephone call, at midday on April 3, 2009, was proof that Rizer’s motive and her defense were selfish.

“Instead of calling an ambulance for help, she called my husband, pleading for help for herself,” Melissa Rizer said.

Melissa and her husband, James Rizer, lived near his father and stepmother on Lovett Road. He was the first to arrive at the scene, finding his stepmother kneeling before his dead father.

In addition to spending at least the next 17 years at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, Rizer will also be responsible for reimbursing her husband’s estate for his funeral expenses, and the state for the costs of prosecution. Those prosecution costs, including fees for expert witnesses who helped send her to prison, are approximately $15,000, Williams told Crow.

Williams said the convicted Rizer has bank deposits and other assets that will allow her to reimburse those costs.

Rizer’s attorney, Herman Carson of Athens, said an appeal will be filed.