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Purdue University Killer Cody Cousins Sentenced To 65 Years

By John Dodge

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Cody Cousins, who savagely murdered Purdue University student Andrew Boldt in a campus shooting last January, says he committed the crime "because I wanted to."

"In general, I do what I want and I deal with the consequences later," Cousins, who pleaded guilty this summer, told the court during his sentencing hearing last week.

In terms of justice, the consequence was a 65 year prison term, the maximum allowed under Indiana law. Cousins had struggled with mental illness, but that did not factor into the sentencing decision. With time off for good behavior, Cousins will serve about half of that sentence.

In a gripping account of the hearing by Purdue Exponent writer Haley Checkley, Andrew Boldt's mother Mary, looked directly at Cousins and asked: "Mr. Cousins, did you even know my son Andrew?"

"What did he do to make you so mad?"

"Were you stalking him?"

"Who did you go to for support?"

On Jan. 21 around noon, Cousins entered the Electrical Engineering building on campus and confronted Boldt, of West Bend, Wis., and shot and stabbed the 21-year-old multiple times.

According to the Exponent, Elmo Griggs, the pathologist who performed the autopsy, said this was by far "the worst homicide (he had) ever seen" in a career that has included roughly 9,500 such examinations.

Griggs said Boldt was found with five gunshot wounds and 19 stab wounds.

According to multiple accounts, Boldt was an exceptionally gifted student.

"He does not brag about his intelligence. He loves to help people in need and it's a quality that we're going to miss from him," Robert Wayner, a friend of the victim,said at the time of the shooting.

During the sentencing hearing, Judge Thomas Busch likened the case to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. Cousins, who is highly intelligent, was so jealous of Boldt that it drove him to murder.

"That's not insanity. That's not mental illness," Busch said, calling the slaying a "crime of terror."

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