By Khalida Sarwari
A man was sentenced Thursday to 35 years to life in prison for killing his girlfriend in Salinas two years ago, according to prosecutors.
A Monterey County Superior Court judge sentenced Edward Gardner, 47, for the Feb. 7, 2008, second-degree murder of his girlfriend, 46-year-old Jean Franklin, a U.S. postal worker.
On that day, the victim was found lying face down with a bedspread around her legs in the bedroom of the apartment she shared with Gardner. Prosecutors said she was stabbed in the neck.
Gardner’s sentence would have been 15 years but was more than doubled because he had a prior strike offense for another murder in Seaside in 1994.
In court today, the victim’s 27-year-old daughter, Shimeko Franklin, described her mother as her “best friend” and a “wonderful grandmother” to her 6-year-old son, prosecutors said.
The victim’s sister, Yoko Hoffman, displayed a photo of the victim and told the judge she had worked hard as a single mother to support her two daughters. Hoffman said she had been planning to buy her dream house prior to her death, prosecutors said.