Mom Gets 17 Years for Attempted Murder of Daughters

ROSEVILLE, Minn. - A Roseville mother was sentenced to 17 years in prison Thursday for the attempted stabbing deaths of her two daughters.

"I'm sorrier than I can say that all this happened," said 61-year-old Sylvia Sieferman, a former systems analyst and Boston University professor. She plead guilty to 2nd degree attempted murder in Ramsey County District Court.

Sieferman must serve at least 11 years in prison under the plea agreement negotiated in May.

The August attacks were an "unspeakable tragedy" and that "the only positive is that you were not successful" in killing the two girls, said the judge.

Sieferman's daughters were both 11 at the time of the attacks and are being raised by a relative of their mother.

Two months ago, at her plea hearing, Sieferman spoke of how she had been depressed, and drinking heavily, and had set out to kill the girls out of fears she would leave them to be raised by strangers if she killed herself.

She took a butcher knife and a pillow to daughter Linnea's room, and after putting the pillow up to her face so she wouldn't see anything, cut her throat. She then attacked Linnea's sister, Hannah, with an ax. Sieferman claims no recollection of the second attack.

Officers arrived at the home 400 block of County Road C to find Sieferman on the front steps, bleeding heavily from a self-inflicted stab wound to the neck, yelling, "Kill me, kill me."

The defendant's attorney said at the time of her plea hearing that he believed Sieferman had a viable mental illness defense, but that she had decided to plead guilty to spare her daughters the ordeal of a trial.