15-year term imposed in jewelry store worker kidnap, torture

One of three men convicted of kidnapping and torturing a jewelry store worker before dumping her in a cemetery in an attempt to get the shop’s security codes has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.

The Philadelphia Daily News reports that 23-year-old Basil Buie apologized Wednesday and said he told the victim during her ordeal that he wouldn’t allow the others to kill her.

Defense attorney Arnold Joseph said before sentencing that the victim would never be the same, and for that he was “sorry from the bottom of my heart.” Prosecutors said she suffered traumatic brain injury, memory loss and partial vision loss.

The judge said that in nearly a quarter-century on the bench, he could not recall “a crime so horrific or heinous.”