Top inset: Cynthia Berendzen (Hawaii Ash Scatterings). Bottom inset: Dillon Alexander Waller (Doña Ana County Detention Center). Background: The home in New Mexico where Berendzen was killed (KTSM).
A New Mexico man will spend the rest of his life in prison for strangling his mother and propping her decomposing body in the shower to make it look like she’d fallen and hit her head.
Dillon Alexander Waller, 31, learned his fate on Monday for the first-degree murder of his mother, Cynthia Berendzen, 69. Waller was also sentenced to an additional three years for the charge of tampering with evidence, prosecutors said in a press release. He was found guilty in December.
Berendzen allowed her son to live with her at her home in Las Cruces even though the two had a history of domestic violence and she had taken out a protective order against him, according to the statement of facts.
