(Stillwater, Okla.) – A Cushing woman — charged as the third defendant in the fatal stabbing of a woman who had lived with her — pleaded guilty today to a reduced charge of accessory to first-degree murder, for which she was given a 10-year prison term followed by two years of probation.
Laurie Darlene Bacon, 42, who was originally scheduled to have a Jan. 20 jury trial on a first-degree murder charge, was ordered today by District Judge Phillip Corley to pay $2,884 to the victims’ compensation fund along with the cost of her incarceration and a $100 fine, court records show.
Under the judge’s order, Bacon’s sentence will run concurrently to a five-year prison term she is currently serving, followed by five years of probation, for twice possessing a drug near Cushing High School in 2013, court records show.
The victim, 33-year-old Amber Nicole “Nikki” Sporleder, was found dead with her throat cut in a ditch about 7 a.m. on May 24, 2013, on Harmony Road north of Riverbend Road near Yale, according to preliminary hearing testimony.
Bacon gave the “green light” to kill Sporleder, murder co-defendant Justin Allen Kelley, 33, of Cushing, testified in a preliminary hearing.
Kelley, who was also charged with first-degree murder, is serving a 25-year prison term followed by probation for life in exchange for his testimony against Bacon.
An ex-convict, Denny Allen Sisney, 37, of Cushing, for whom the death penalty was originally sought, pleaded guilty four months ago to first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing, for which he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Kelley testified in a preliminary hearing that he drove the victim and Sisney in Bacon’s truck to the location where he said Sisney killed Sporleder, while Kelley stayed inside the vehicle with the radio turned up.
Kelley testified that the slain woman had been stealing Bacon’s personal items and “not paying her dope money.”
Bacon said that the victim “needed to be taught a lesson. Denny (Sisney) said he’d take care of it,” Kelley testified in a preliminary hearing.
Bacon said that the victim “was the reason she got busted the first time,” Kelley testified in a preliminary hearing.
At the time of his arrest in the woman’s slaying, Sisney was on 10 years’ probation for assault and battery on a police officer in Creek County in 2009.
Sisney served about five months of a one-year prison term for being a felon in possession of a .380 handgun in Tulsa County in 2011, state Department of Corrections records show.
Sisney also served about four months of a one-year sentence for domestic assault and battery by strangulation in Creek County in 2007, DOC records show.
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