SALEM, Ore. (AP) - A man who pleaded guilty to killing Christopher Lampkin had his sentencing delayed until Thursday, but not before hearing from the victim's relatives.
     
Leonardo Garcia Gonzalez Jr., 23, chopped off Lampkin's head and legs after shooting him execution-style in April 2006. Gonzalez stuffed the remains of the Salem man into a duffel bag and asked the son of a McMinnville farmer to feed them to the pigs.
     
The farmer's son, however, placed the bag inside an empty barrel, where it was found months later by Salem detectives acting on a tip.
     
Lampkin's friends and relatives called Gonzalez a "terrible person" capable of "inconceivable cruelty, terror and torment."
     
"It's like they took away his identity when they took away his head," testified Denise Mullins, Lampkin's mother. "They reduced Christopher to something unrecognizable even to his own mother."
     
Gonzalez faces 25 years to life for the murder. Marion County Judge Dennis Graves delayed sentencing from Monday until Thursday because of confusion over a legal technicality.

The issue was whether sentences to secondary charges, such as abuse of a corpse, could run consecutively to the time Gonzalez will serve for murder.
     
Gonzalez and a cousin forced Lampkin to his knees and made him beg for his life in their Salem apartment, Deputy District Attorney Matt Kemmy told the judge.
     
According to Gonzalez, he became paranoid when he heard a knock at the door. "I become convinced he was scoping out the apartment to rip me off," Gonzalez said during his statement to the judge. "I was really afraid someone was going to rob and shoot me."
     
They shot Lampkin, pictured at right, in the head and then dragged his body to the bathtub, Kemmy said. They used kitchen knives to cut off his head and his legs at the knees. What remained of the body was found at the farm, but the severed head and legs have not been recovered.
     
Lampkin's mother identified the body by a watch left strapped to the corpse's left arm.
     
"Were you thrilled when the trigger was pulled?" Lampkin's grandmother, Vickie Lampkin, asked Gonzalez during her statement. "Or did the thrill come when you chopped up his body?"
     
Gonzalez's cousin, Victor Tovar Gonzalez, has pleaded guilty to assault, hindering prosecution, abuse of a corpse, unlawful use of a weapon and being a felon in possession of a firearm. His sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 12.
     
The farmer's son was offered immunity in exchange for his cooperation.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)