Gina Virgilio Anchorage, Alaska woman sentenced in the burning death of her boyfriend after dousing the couch he slept on with gasoline and setting it on fire and fleeing.
An Anchorage, Alaska woman will spend 60 years behind bars after setting a couch where her boyfriend slept on fire- leading to the man’s ‘burning’ death.
Gina Virgilio, 32, was on Monday sentenced to to 99 years with 39 years suspended. She was also sentenced to 10 years of probation after her release the Anchorage Daily News reported.
The jail term follows Virgilio having pled guilty of first-degree murder in the 2012 death of then boyfriend, Michael Gonzalez.
The court heard how the man died after Virgilio doused the couch with gasoline while Gonzalez slept, lighting it and shutting the door behind her and fleeing the apartment as he jumped up, yelling, ‘hot, hot’.
Prior to her sentencing, Virgilio, indicated mental illness driving her actions.
‘I hate me for what I did. I can never bring him back,’ Virgilio said.
There was no motive for the murder, which she called frustrating.
‘You can’t make sense out of a mind that makes no sense,’ Virgilio said.
Gina Virgilio was sentenced to 99 years in jail in Anchorage, Alaska for killing her boyfriend by dousing him in gasoline, lighting a fire, and trapping him inside the apartment. https://t.co/OsUGQnFKX1
— KOIN News (@KOINNews) October 15, 2019
‘Her brain was fried from the meth,’
Gonzalez family members gave emotional victim impact statements to the court on Oct. 4. The rest of the sentencing phase was continued to Monday.
Virgilio entered a plea deal earlier this year, with the state agreeing to a sentence of 30 to 70 years. But during sentencing Monday, the state pushed for 70 years, noting circumstances of the crime warranted the higher end.
Speaking on her behalf Monday, Virgilio’s brother Reginald Carney, said she began to change after she started experimenting with drugs – everything from Oxycontin and marijuana to cocaine – at about age 20. She later graduated to intravenous meth use.
‘Her brain was fried from the meth,’ said Virgilio’s public defender, Craig Howard.
She lost weight, kept a distance from loved ones and once tried to kill her child. She also became obsessed with fire, Howard said.
The state eventually took the child from her, shortly before she set the apartment on fire. Before the fire, her brother took her to the emergency room, fearful she would harm herself.
She was released after about three hours with the prognosis of drug-induced psychosis, which would pass.
After the fire, she tested negative for drugs and alcohol.
On the night of June 7, 2012, Virgilio and Gonzalez held a party for Gonzalez’s 24th birthday. While he passed out or fell asleep on the couch early the next morning, she found a gas can and walked a quarter-mile to the nearest gas station to fill it.
Virgilio walked back to the apartment and doused the couch, the carpet in front of it and the area in front of the apartment’s only doorway with gasoline while Gonzalez slept.
She lit mail on fire and tossed it inside. When she saw Gonzalez get up and yell ‘hot, hot’ she shut the door and fled. He died from smoke inhalation and severe burns.
