SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A 21-year-old suburban Syracuse man has been sentenced to 23 years to life in prison for killing his former girlfriend while she was home from college for Thanksgiving break.

Steven Pieper of Liverpool was sentenced Tuesday morning in Onondaga County Court in Syracuse.

He pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder in the November slaying of 20-year-old Jenni-Lyn Watson. He admitted strangling and suffocating Ms. Watson inside her parents' home in the town of Clay on Nov. 19 and dumping her body in a wooded area in a nearby park.

Ms. Watson had returned home from Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., for Thanksgiving the day before she was killed. Searchers found her body eight days later.

First Published: March 8, 2011, 6:30 p.m.