Carla Raye Bousman, 63, of Perry pleaded guilty Friday afternoon to reduced charges in connection with the May 2017 starvation death of her granddaughter Sabrina Ray.
Bousman was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in a plea bargain arranged by her attorney, James S. Nelsen, and the state of Iowa, represented in the proceedings by Dallas County Attorney Wayne Reisetter and Assistant Dallas County Attorney Stacy Ritchie.
Bousman was sentenced to 10 years for neglect or abandonment of a dependent person, a Class C felony, and one year for each of two counts of false imprisonment, two years for obstructing prosecution or defense, two years for accessory after the fact to a felony and two years for each of two counts of child endangerment.
The sentences will be served consecutively for a total of 20 years.
“I wish I could go back to that day and change everything and do what I know was the proper thing to do,” a tearful Bousman told Dallas County District Court Judge Terry Rickers before he pronounced sentence. “I can’t change what is done now, but I’m very sorry.”
In recommending the maximum sentence under the charges, Ritchie reminded the court that “Mrs. Bousman was the last person, the last hope that Sabrina Ray had. But for her neglect, Sabrina might have survived. But for her refusal to obtain medical help for Sabrina while she lived, her two sisters had to watch their older sister die.”
“How could you do that to your grandchildren?” Rickers said to Bousman.
Bousman said she felt she “was manipulated into a situation” she did not fully understand.
“Certainly,” Rickers said, “when you see children locked and confined against their will and one of them in their death throws, that didn’t tip you off to the fact that something was horribly wrong and you needed to intervene immediately?”
Bousman was compelled by the evidence to admit her guilt in Sabrina’s death.
“When I recognized she was in distress, I did not seek medical assistance or call a doctor,” she said. “I hope they will forgive me for failing them when they needed me most.”
Bousman also admitted she removed and hid a door lock from the bedroom where Sabrina and her two younger sisters, called M.R. and H.R. in the proceedings, were imprisoned, and she admitted concealing other facts from law enforcement in the course of the investigation.
Marc and Misty Ray, her daughter and son-in-law, “asked me to remove the lock from the door,” Bousman said. She also admitted confining H.R. and M.R. to the room with Sabrina as Sabrina was dying, and she did not feed the younger children.
According to Ritchie, Bousman’s deliberate actions led to the death of “a 16-year-old girl who called her grandma: Sabrina Lynn Ray.” Bousman chose to neglect the adopted child and let her die in order to protect her own daughter, Ritchie said, “for to render aid to her dying grandchild would have been to the detriment of her own daughter, Misty Rae Bousman.”
Ritchie read for the record a statement from M.R.: “I wish you would have taken Sabrina to the doctor the day she died instead of sitting there. I wish you would not have lied to the police and said everything was all right. I wish you would have said that you hurt us and Marc and Misty hurt us and Justin hurt us. I wish you wouldn’t have been mean to us. I wish we could have been like other families and had ice cream together.”
In accepting Bousman’s plea and passing sentence, Judge Rickers said, “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the maximum sentence in this case is the only appropriate sentence. Grandmothers are supposed to be special to their grandkids. Grandmas are supposed to be spoil their grandkids, take them out for ice cream like M.R. asked you to do. Grandmas aren’t supposed to contribute to the confinement and degradation of their own grandchildren. Visiting a grandma is supposed to be a dream, but apparently in this case the contact between you and your grandchildren was nothing but a nightmare.”
Rickers continued, “The reckless and wanton disregard that you displayed toward your grandchildren justifies that these terms be served consecutively. You broke your grandchildren’s hearts. You allowed two of them to watch their sister die. Anything less than the maximum sentence in this case would just further degrade the memory of Sabrina Ray and what you did to her sisters.”
Nelsen, Bousman’s attorney, said his client understood the outcome of a trial “could be much worse,” and the state’s offer of a 20-year jail term was “an acceptable outcome.”
Bousman will be transported to Mitchellville Correctional Institution for Women to begin incarceration.
The first-degree murder trial of Bosman’s daughter and son-in-law, Marc and Misty Ray, has not been scheduled.
