David Sumney, the Pennsylvania man who brutally murdered his mother and took selfies with her body, has been sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison thanks to a controversial plea deal that virtually everyone in their family was vocally against.
By virtue of being jailed since 2019, he could get out in as few as 17 years.
Sumney, 33, received the sentence on a single third-degree murder charge in connection with the savage 2019 slaying of his 67-year-old mother Margaret. According to a criminal complaint against Sumney, he tortured and murdered his mother before shoving her body in a bathroom sometime before Sept. 1 that year. Sumney also documented the whole harrowing scene, taking 277 photos that included several selfies with blood on his face and his mom’s body.
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Despite the twisted allegations against him, Sumney was able to secure a plea deal in August that dismissed some of the most heinous charges, including first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse.
“I cannot believe I would let myself get in such a state where I could do something so bad, so horrible. I cannot believe what I did, that I killed my own mother,” Sumney, wearing a red prison jumpsuit while his hands were handcuffed in front of him by a prisoner belt, told the judge during the Thursday hearing on the fifth floor of Allegheny County County Court. “I cannot stop thinking about it. I think about it every day. I’m sorry, but sorry doesn’t cut it. I handled things as badly as a person could have.”
“To my family, to my sisters, and my aunts, I know it’s impossible to forgive me. I don’t forgive myself. I just want to let them know I am truly sorry,” he added.
Both the district attorney and Sumney’s lawyers presented witnesses to the court to bolster their arguments for harsher (though not nearly as harsh as the family wished) and more modest sentences, respectively. Prosecutors called several of Margaret’s family members to speak, including two of her sisters and her niece, Margo.
Margaret’s older sister, Mary Ellen, stared at Sumney as she called him “less than a piece of trash” and said that she wished he “receive the death penalty.” Ann Shade, their other sister, also begged the court “to not give him a second chance.”
If convicted of the original charges, Sumney would have faced life behind bars.
Sumney’s cousin, Margo, recalled how she was one of the first people to enter her aunt’s blood-soaked home in 2019—saying she will never forget the “metallic smell” when she walked in.
“He is the epitome of pure evil,” she said in court. “We will never find peace with any of this.”
Among the defense’s witnesses were two Allegheny jail employees, one of whom described Sumney as a model prisoner who had no disciplinary infractions and was “doing Bible studies with other inmates.” Also in the mix: a doctor who made the case for Sumney having had diminished mental capacity at the time of the murder thanks to “extremely high doses” of Adderall.
His defense attorney, Chris Patterini, added Thursday that his client has “expressed remorse” and argued that his actions were the result of drug and alcohol use before asking for seven years in prison. Prosecutors called for a minimum of 15 years.
“That’s ridiculous,” Ellen, David’s half-sister, told The Daily Beast during the hearing, referring to the defense’s claims about Sumney.
While Ellen told The Daily Beast this week that she chose not to attend Sumney’s sentencing in person because her wishes about the case have been repeatedly ignored, she spoke to the court via Zoom to express her anguish about the gory details of their mother’s death.
“You broke her back. You paralyzed our mother. And then you just beat her and beat her. The blood was splattered along the walls,” Ellen said. “But I think the sickest part is the pictures. The 277 pictures. You only take pictures if you want to go back and see what you did.”
“David, she gave you everything she had. And when she didn’t have anything else to give, you killed her,” she added. “I had no idea you were this kind of monster. And I’m still upset you were not prosecuted to the fullest. This was first-degree murder.”
In the end, Borkowski sentenced Sumney to a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of 40 years, before noting that he has already served three years in jail pending Thursday’s hearing.
That Sumney could be up for parole in 17 years “is crazy for murder,” Ellen told The Daily Beast.
The sentencing coming short of life behind bars marked the final blow for the Sumney family, who have been vocally fighting for a full-scale prosecution since Sept. 4, 2019, when he was arrested outside of his uncle’s funeral. It also places more pressure on another criminal case Sumney faces in Atlantic City—where an ex-girlfriend says he waterboarded and strangled her in a hotel room in July 2019.
“I’m happy,” the ex-girlfriend told The Daily Beast about Sumney’s sentencing, even though she too wished he had been prosecuted to the fullest. “It let me breathe a lot.”
Last month, after repeated requests to overturn Sumney’s plea deal, Borkowski oversaw a 15-minute hearing where Ellen was allowed to express her family’s outrage.
Despite the evidence against Sumney, a row of family members all shaking their heads, and letters from Ellen’s daughter and from her father, Borkowski upheld the plea deal. “Cases are resolved on a regular basis against the wishes of family members… and sometimes even victims,” he said.
“This is just wrong,” Ann Shade, one of Margaret’s three sisters in attendance, told The Daily Beast at the October hearing. “I just can’t believe this. Nobody is listening to us.”
When Sumney was first arrested days after the murder, police discovered him with a silver bracelet, a diamond gold necklace, his mother’s debit card, and three blank checks in her name.
Police would later also learn that after the murder, Sumney checked into a nearby Philadelphia hotel and prepaid for three nights. On the second day of his stay, the complaint states, Sumney stopped a hotel manager in the lobby and gave her a set of pearls before saying, “from a special lady to a special lady.”
The Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office eventually concluded that Margaret sustained multiple fractured ribs and a spinal fracture in the attack that also left contusions on her body and lacerations on her face. The complaint said the torture would have paralyzed the mother-of-three from the waist down had she survived.
Prosecutors previously revealed in a 2020 court hearing that Sumney extensively searched online on how to dispose of his mom’s remains. Among the searches: “How long does it take before a body starts to decompose?” and “How long do you wait to dispose of a body?”
The Allegheny County Office of the District Attorney told The Daily Beast on Thursday that “we believe justice was served” in the sentencing. An attorney for Sumney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While Sumney’s case in Pennsylvania is effectively over, his half-sister Ellen said there was hope the Atlantic City case—in which he has yet to face a preliminary hearing—could help keep him off the street even longer.
“I’m disappointed with the Pennsylvania criminal justice system,” Ellen added. “Justice was not served. I feel like David won.”
