Sydney Sutherland

Arkansas Farmer Pleads Guilty to Raping, Killing Nurse Sydney Sutherland

Quake Lewellyn rammed Sutherland with his truck, loaded her into the back, and drove to another location, where he raped and buried her.

The Arkansas man accused of ramming a jogger with his truck and raping her as she was dying entered guilty pleas Friday to capital murder and rape and was sentenced to life without parole.

Quake Lewellyn, 29, avoids the death penalty with his plea in the death of 25-year-old Sydney Sutherland, an area nurse who knew her killer, KAIT reported.

Lewellyn, from a well-known local farming family, had been charged with capital murder, rape, kidnapping, and abuse of a corpse in the 2020 murder, and prosecutors had said they fully intended to seek the death penalty if he was convicted.

As CrimeOnline previously reported, Lewellyn reportedly confessed and told investigators he passed Sutherland as she jogged, then turned around and came back and struck her with the truck. He put her in the back of the truck and drove to another location, where he raped and buried her. Sutherland’s body was found two miles from where Lewellyn hit her.

The medical examiner found that she died from multiple blunt force traumas, but it’s not clear when in the sequence of events she died.

The victim’s mother, Maggie Sutherland, previously said she thought Lewellyn “deserves the death penalty.”

“He is a monster, an evil monster,” she said. “She did not deserve any of that.”

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