The Naugatuck woman who plead guilty in December for murdering a paraeducator in Waterbury back in 2022, was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Wednesday.
Heather Anderson was sentenced to serve a minimum of 25 years behind bars for the October 2022 killing of Shelley Stamp, a 34-year-old para-professional at Waterbury Public Schools.
“It’s unforgiveable,” Judge Joseph B. Schwartz said. “Kind of leaves me at a loss for words.”
Stamp’s family read emotional statements to the court ahead of the sentencing.
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“I hope the look on my sister’s face, the cries of help as you brutally attacked her, haunts you for the rest of your life,” Laura Tajildeen, Stamp’s sister, said to Anderson. “I hope you rot in your prison cell for the rest of your miserable life, and you dwell on the choices that you’ve made, and they haunt you for every minute of every day, because you deserve no happiness and no mercy from the court as you had none for my sister.”
The family said they don’t feel like justice has been served.
“I fought but I have not obtained justice for Shelley,” Kathy Daversa, Stamp’s mother, said. “25 to 30 years is not justice for the brutal and heinous murder of a vivacious, caring, loving, young woman in the prime of her life.”
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Daversa said she is kept up at night with thoughts of her daughter’s murder. Stamp’s body was found by her own family members, face down in a pool of blood.
“She must have been so scared. What a horrible way to die. Looking up at a stranger’s face full of rage, in desperate need of money to supply your disgusting drug habit,” Daversa said. “I picture her horrific death in my mind over and over again. No one can imagine picturing your daughter’s viscous murder obsessively.”
Daversa said she often thinks about all her daughter and her family will miss out on.
“Instead of someday shopping for her wedding gown, I had to buy clothes for her funeral. Instead of seeing her walk down the aisle at her wedding, I had to watch her be carried by pallbearers in her casket at her funeral,” she said.
Police said Anderson broke into Stamp’s Waterbury apartment, killed her, and then ransacked her home. She took credit cards and leftovers with her, according to court documents.
“We stayed in the apartment lobby for hours while the police investigated and my sister lay dead on the floor of her apartment,” Tajildeen said.
The family said it was all over “peanuts.”
“Suddenly, my beautiful, talented, caring, funny and smart daughter was viciously ripped from me. She was murdered in her home, coming home from work, by total strangers, for $70,” her mom said.
Anderson apologized to the family after their statements, and even mouthed that she was sorry to the family seated in the courtroom.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” she said.
Her attorney said Anderson has struggled with substance abuse for years, and lost her mother and fiancé to overdoses. She said the events of that October morning were "fuzzy" but that she didn't intentionally kill Stamp, and that she was still alive when she left.
Outside of court, Stamp’s mom echoed again that she doesn’t feel like justice has been served for her daughter.
“This doesn’t bring closure. This isn’t justice. 25 years to 30 years…Shelley had 50 more years to live,” she said. “For that animal to turn around and have the nerve say to me she’s sorry…you’re sorry you got caught. That’s the only thing you’re sorry about you miserable thing.”
The other defendant in this case, Shannon Gritzbach, is facing misdemeanor charges for her role that night, when police said she drove Anderson. She was a no-show at her last court appearance and a warrant is out for her arrest.
“Shannon Gritzbach is walking the streets, footloose and fancy free and doing whatever she wants,” Daversa said. “So it is not over.”
