Wife gets closure in slaying

Ketti Dilone will never know why her husband was murdered last year, but after his killer was sentenced Wednesday to 40 years to life in prison she said she can finally begin to heal.

"I have some closure now," Dilone said after 22-year-old Pachalo Chipeta was sentenced. "I just don't want him to have a chance to restart his life."

Chipeta looked skyward as prosecutor Richard Scow recounted Sanjay Makhijani's brutal death. Scow explained that in early January 2007, Chipeta carefully picked out his weapon of choice to kill his roommate.

"He purchases an axe and the next day uses it and almost chops his (Makhijani's) head off," Scow said. "Whatever he says afterward cannot justify the act."

District Court Judge Jennifer Togliatti agreed.

"I stopped looking for a reasonable explanation because they just don't exist," Togliatti said before formally levying the sentence, which had previously been decided upon by the jury that convicted Chipeta.

The immigrant from Africa was convicted of hacking Makhijani, 31, to death with an axe, stuffing his body into a suitcase and dumping it in the desert near Tropicana Avenue and Boulder Highway.

"I offer my apologies to Sanjay and his family," Chipeta said softly. "I pray God will bless them all their life."

Dilone, who was separated from her husband, knew something was wrong when Makhijani didn't show up for Thanksgiving last year and convinced something had happened to him when he also missed their daughter's 11th birthday in December. She received a phone call from the Clark County coroner's office on Jan. 6.

"I don't think he (Chipeta) should ever see freedom again," Dilone told Togliatt. "We miss (Makhijani) dearly. In 40 years, he won't return so I don't think it's fair that he (Chipeta) gets out and gets to start a new life."

Dilone said Makhijani knew Chipeta for about a year and allowed the younger man to stay with him because he was having a tough time. After the killing, she visited Chipeta in jail to track down answers.

"First he said he (Makhijani) owed him money, then he told police he was a terrorist and was headed to New York with guns," she said.

Chipeta moved to the United States from the African nation of Malawi when he was 12 years old. His parents hoped to provide a better life for their son.

But Fay Chipeta, Pachalo's stepmother, told the Review-Journal last year that he began to smoke marijuana when he was in his late teens. He dreamed of becoming a rap music producer, but ended up bouncing from job to job. He left the family home when he was 19 and worked as a insurance salesman and a telemarketer.

"Pachalo just became a nomad," his stepmother said.

Dilone later acknowledged that Chipeta's youthfulness nagged at her, though she would like him to never walk outside prison walls.

"It hurts me because he is so young," she said. "It's sad there are two lives that are gone forever."