US navy member sentenced to 44 years in prison for killing female sailor

A member of the US navy has been ordered to spend 44 years in federal prison after admitting that he fatally strangled a fellow sailor in his barracks room, violently squeezed the neck of a second woman onboard an aircraft carrier and illegally made secret video recordings of a third, including while they were being intimate.

Meanwhile, the family of the petty officer whom Jermiah Copeland acknowledged murdering, Angelina Resendiz, has called for reforms within the armed forces meant to better protect women serving in the military.

Aspects of Resendiz’s slaying evoke the case of the US army soldier Vanessa Guillén, whose 2020 murder at a Texas base prompted the military to overhaul its policies against sexual assault and harassment.

According to the US Naval Institute (USNI), an independent, non-profit watchdog, Resendiz was last known to be alive in her barracks room at Virginia’s Naval Station Norfolk.

Investigators found her body two weeks later in woods about 10 miles (16km) from the base. They came to suspect Copeland – a 21-year-old culinary specialist – had killed Resendiz in his room at the barracks, concealed her corpse in his closet for days and then discarded her body in the woods.

During a two-day court proceeding that began on Monday, Copeland admitted to a military judge that he had indeed killed Resendiz, a native of Mexia, Texas, and also a culinary specialist. He said he did that amid a night of imbibing and kissing in his room, as the Virginia news outlet WTKR reported.

Copeland wanted his shipmate on the guided-missile destroyer USS James E Williams to be quiet after a notification on his telephone upset her, used his hands to strangle her to death after she fell to the floor and eventually brought her to woods in Norfolk’s Broad Creek area, he said.

He acknowledged he later lied to Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents looking into what happened to Resendiz by telling them he had brought her to her room alive, according to WTKR.

Furthermore, Copeland conceded that he compressed the neck of another woman in July 2024 onboard the USS Harry S Truman. And he confessed to illicitly, furtively recording a woman in a bathroom stall as well as her and him having sex.

Copeland ultimately declared himself guilty in a general court-martial of unpremeditated murder and making a false official statement in connection with Resendiz. He apologized to his and Resendiz’s families as well as the navy.