The ex-con who robbed and then strangled the owner of a Windsor Terrace dry cleaner in 2008 received the maximum sentence today: 25 years to life in prison. Jamal Winter, who killed beloved Eden Dry Cleaning owner Kyong-Sook Woo while on parole for another robbery nearby, still denies guilt, telling judge Guy Mangano, "I was set up. I was set up and that's what happened ... sometimes you have to pay the consequences." Huh?
During the sentencing, Mangano called Winter "evil," adding, "It's not a word I use easily. He choked the life out of her. And after she passed out, he continued strangling her for two, three minutes. This defendant almost reveled in the power he had." After the murder, Winter had shooed away a customer by pretending to be an employee, and attempted to burn his fingerprints off Woo's neck with ammonia. (Stupidly, he left the bottle of ammonia behind with fingerprints on it.)
The murder shocked the quiet community near Prospect Park, and deprived Woo's ailing husband of his wife's care. Their son, Kenneth Oh, attended the sentencing today and told the Daily News, "There's no death penalty in New York, right? It's not enough."
