Katherine Mary Neitzke’s sister-in-law, Brittany, cried as she told a Superior Court judge that there would be no formal eulogy for her murdered relative whose body remains missing after she vanished almost five years ago. “We will never get her back,” she said Friday, May 3, at the Riverside County Hall of Justice in Riverside during sentencing for Neitzke’s killer, boyfriend Hugo Leonel Hernandez. “We will never get a chance to say our goodbyes, to give her a proper memorial and lay her to rest. “All Kat wanted in life was to love and be loved. I never thought in a million years this is how her story would end,” Brittany said. Judge Jeffrey Prevost sentenced Hernandez, 46, to the maximum term, 25 years to life in state prison for killing Neitzke, a 33-year-old Hemet resident. He was not eligible for life without parole because the murder conviction lacked a special-circumstance allegation such as lying in wait, using a firearm or committing a robbery at the same time. Hernandez declined to make a statement on his own behalf. Hugo Leonel Hernandez, 46, was sentenced in Superior Court in Riverside to 25 years to life in state prison on May 3, 2024, for killing his girlfriend, Katherine Mary Neitzke, 33, of Hemet. (Courtesy of Riverside County Sheriff’s Department) Hernandez, wearing a yellow jumpsuit signifying that he is in protective custody in jail, was attentive as relatives of Neitzke spoke. Although they provided their full names to the court, they asked that their last names not be published, Deputy District Attorney Amy Zois said, because they are afraid for their safety. The Sheriff’s Department began investigating in December 2019 when relatives reported Neitzke missing from the barn-like structure where she had been living with Hernandez on Mapes Road in Romoland. Relatives had not heard from her since that July 25, when Neitzke placed a frantic call to a friend, begging her to “please just come” and pick her up. Neitzke told the friend that she’d first call her back. But Neitzke never did. Hernandez apparently had a falling out with Neitzke. “She is a rat and I had to take her down,” Hernandez said, according to a friend’s account of the conversation to investigators contained in a sworn statement written to obtain an arrest warrant. Hernandez strangled Neitzke, wrapped her body in carpet and, with the assistance of that friend, dumped her off Highway 74 a few miles east of Quest Diagnostics in San Juan Capistrano. The friend, Edilberto “Eddie” Avena, 44, was sentenced to two years probation in March after being convicted of being an accessory to Hernandez’s crime. “He strangled my first-born child,” Neitzke’s mother, Theresa, and sister, Britney, said in a victim impact statement read by Zois. The statement said Hernandez let the body, covered with clothes, lay on the floor next to his bed for two days while he slept after being awake for 15 days straight because he was high on drugs. Then, the statement said, “They drove around for hours. They got gas, purchased a bottle of alcohol and a lighter just to get high again before grabbing her out of the back of the SUV and throwing her over a cliff like she was trash. … To have a child’s life taken away so viciously is another level of pain I would not wish on any other mother.” An aunt of Neitzke, Josephine, was the last relative to speak. “That little girl was everything. She was the first baby I ever held. She taught me how to be a mother. … I have nightmares all the time,” she told Prevost. Related Articles Crime and Public Safety | Undercover drug operation ‘Street Sweeper’ leads to arrest of more than 100 people in Riverside Crime and Public Safety | Man gets 2 life sentences for killing nephews in Arcadia with bolt cutter, pipe Crime and Public Safety | 1 year after cyberattack, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has yet to fully recover Crime and Public Safety | Slow police response to violence at UCLA campus protest under investigation Crime and Public Safety | Man charged with hate crime after Yucaipa church damaged by fire