A 23-year-old Inglewood man who stabbed and strangled his maternal grandmother in her Van Nuys apartment in 1983 has been sentenced to 12 years in state prison for manslaughter.
In a written statement included in Van Nuys Superior Court records, Robert Miguel Gibson said he killed his 84-year-old grandmother because he believed that she was causing health and marital problems for his parents.
"The origin of my crime is that I valued the lives and well-being of my parents over that of my grandmother," Gibson wrote. "My distorted emotions were prejudiced by feelings of incredible love and concern for my parents because they were the most important people in the world to me."
Gibson, who was 19 at the time of the killing, said his grandmother constantly criticized family members and dominated their lives, causing both his parents to drink excessive amounts of alcohol.
