Bucks man sentenced to decades in prison in girlfriend’s brutal murder

A Bucks County man who killed his girlfriend, leaving her with injuries prosecutors described as akin to being hit by a vehicle, was sentenced Tuesday to 25 to 50 years in prison.

Jason Lutey, 43, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, possession of an instrument of a crime, abuse of a corpse, and related offenses in the September slaying of Colleen Patterson, 46, whom he lived with in New Britain.

First Deputy District Attorney Gregg Shore, the lead prosecutor, would have pursued the death penalty against Lutey had the case gone to trial.

“How I was able to commit such a heinous act against such a beautiful, loving woman, I know not,” Lutey said inside the Doylestown courtroom of Judge Gary B. Gilman. “It will haunt me for the rest of my days.”

On the day of Lutey’s arrest, his sister called 911 to say he had killed his girlfriend, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.

An officer from the Central Bucks Regional Police Department went to the home Lutey had shared with Patterson, and he told the officer her body was in his car. The officer found the body, wrapped in a blood-soaked cloth, in the back of Lutey’s Toyota Highlander, parked in the driveway.

Inside their home were signs of a struggle, including overturned furniture and drops of blood, Shore said Tuesday. A mop inside the home later tested positive for blood and hair.

Investigators also discovered two notes Lutey had written to his 7-year-old son, one in which he told the boy he was responsible for this “tragedy," according to Shore, and another in which he admitted he had “snapped” and “acted like a monster.”

Neighbors also told county detectives they had heard the couple arguing before the discovery, and that Lutey had told two of them on the night of the murder that he “thinks he killed Colleen,” according to court paperwork.

He had apparently put her body in the car to dispose of it in the woods, and had plans to kill himself next to the corpse, but was talked into “accepting responsibility” by family members, according to his attorney, Brad Bastedo.

“I have cheated everyone out of the privilege of Colleen,” Lutey said in the courtroom Tuesday, in tears. “To all of you, I am eternally sorry.”

A county medical examiner later determined that Patterson was killed by multiple blunt-force injuries to her torso, severe blows likely inflicted by kicking or stomping, Shore said. The injuries fractured her ribs and caused major trauma to her internal organs.

In a motion filed this winter to seek the death penalty against Lutey, Shore said he “brutalized” Patterson, and that her injuries indicated that she had been tortured to death.

“This is clearly a sad, distressing story of mental health,” Shore said in court Tuesday. “However, there are plenty of people in our society who have gone through mental health issues and haven’t done what this defendant did.”

Lutey has long grappled with PTSD and depression, according to Bastedo. During his time as a paratrooper in the Army, Lutey suffered more than 20 concussions, and was present at Fort Bragg in 1995 when a sniper wounded 18 soldiers, including one standing next to Lutey during a physical training session.

Later in life, he struggled with paranoia, self-medicated with alcohol and prescription medicine, and tried to kill himself twice, Bastedo said.

Bastedo told Gilman that he explained Lutey’s history as a means of “presenting a picture of who he is, and how he became that person that night, with so much anger.”

But Patterson’s sister, Deborah Zboray, said that, regardless of why it happened or what caused her sister’s death, it will forever shatter the lives of her family, especially Patterson’s children and grandchildren.

“Colleen will never again be with her family, and I hope she’s watching today, knowing I will step into the roles she was supposed to play,” Zboray said as she stood before Gilman. “I hold tightly to the hope that one day we will meet again, and I will hold her in my arms.”