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Brigham City • At least twice a day, Sheldon Mansfield drives past the cemetery where his 19-year-old daughter is buried.
And every day, Mansfield asks his daughter, Keltsie Gerlach, for help to be the person she wants him to be.
"Honestly for a few days, that was tough, knowing my daughter's personality," Mansfield said Wednesday during the sentencing hearing for his daughter's killer, Spencer Gerlach. "[Because of] how loving she was, how kind. How non-vindictive she was. That was hard, because that's not what I wanted to do."
As Mansfield stood before 1st District Judge Brandon Maynard on Wednesday, he asked the judge to give a just sentence and said he hopes his family can move on from the brutal murder.
"I love my daughter," Mansfield said. "And I miss her."
Spencer Gerlach, 21, pleaded guilty last month to first-degree felony murder, admitting that he stabbed his ex-wife dozens of times on April 15 inside her Brigham City apartment while their young daughter was in another room.
When given the chance to speak — just before Maynard sentenced him to a 15-year-to-life term at the state prison — Gerlach's voice was deep and flat, and he occasionally broke into tears as he apologized to everyone who had been affected by the crime.
"Absolutely in no way did Keltsie deserve to be killed," he said. "…I feel terrible for Keltsie. She was such a kind, sweet woman."
Spencer Gerlach told the judge that he pleaded guilty to take responsibility for his actions. But he also said that he felt his ex-wife knew it would "push me right over the edge" that she was on the phone with another man and had ignored him when he came to her apartment with lunch to share with her and their 15-month-old daughter.
He said he wishes Keltsie Gerlach had said something to "snap him out" of his rage.
"She did not really try to stop me," he said of the stabbing. "She just let it happen."
Keltsie Gerlach's grandfather, Gary Warren, told the judge that she had moved into her apartment just days before the murder, and had been previously living with him and his wife. He said he felt Spencer Gerlach was "just waiting for the opportunity to get her alone to murder her."
"This murder was a brutal and vicious murder," Warren said. "He not only stabbed her, but continued to stab her 32 times. On every part of her body."
According to preliminary hearing testimony, Spencer Gerlach told police he was "extremely frustrated" with Keltsie Gerlach after she ignored him when he arrived with a pizza.
Spencer Gerlach went outside to his car and got a military-style knife, then placed their child in her crib, shut the bedroom door, and confronted his ex-wife, a police officer testified.
The ex-husband first stabbed the woman in the stomach, he told police, before stabbing her multiple times in the abdomen, back, buttocks and neck.
Keltsie Gerlach was dead before the defendant called 911 to report the stabbing, according to testimony — a call that Spencer Gerlach told police he made so authorities would come to the apartment near 700 South and 600 East and take custody of his daughter.
The couple had divorced a month before the homicide, according to court records. Spencer Gerlach had no prior criminal history in Utah, aside from speeding ticket.
Police have said it was the city's first prosecuted homicide in nine years.