Defendant Sean Clemens of Liberty, right, listens as his attorney Greg Meyers addresses Judge W. Wyatt McKay during the plea/sentencing of Clemens Friday morning. Photo .by R. Michael Semple

WARREN — The man who killed and robbed his neighbor in Liberty in 2017, pleaded guilty to the charges against him, was sentenced to life in prison with an additional 26 years and agreed not to appeal his conviction in the deal that kept him off death row.

Sean Clemens, 34, entered the plea Friday morning in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, where about 30 members of Jane LaRue Brown’s family gathered for the hearing. He pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, arson and tampering with evidence. He is not eligible for parole.

Though Clemens was stoic and emotionless, numerous people in Judge W. Wyatt McKay’s courtroom cried as two of Brown’s daughter spoke about their mother, the horror of losing her to a violent crime and their impression of Clemens.

Cynthia Jakubick said she tries not to think of the terror her mother experienced in the last moments of her life, but can’t help it in the early hours of the morning as she tries to sleep, but can’t.

“She didn’t get to pass away,” Jakubick said, adding her mother was violently murdered, so the family couldn’t simply grieve her loss like someone who dies from natural causes.

It’s been difficult, Jakubick said, hearing about Clemens’ rights throughout the process, when her mother’s right to life was disregarded by Clemens, a man her mother tried to help.

The whole incident left everyone that knew Brown feeling vulnerable in their own homes, she said.

“You have ruined many lives, including your own,” said Brown’s daughter, Kathleen Graham. “I will never forgive you.”

In the plea deal, Clemens’ defense attorneys agreed to voluntarily retract the motions they filed to suppress evidence. The defense attempted to have a confession Clemens made to police suppressed, and to have evidence found in his home suppressed after accusing a Liberty police officer of making a warrantless search of the house.

Defense attorney Greg Meyers said Clemens acknowledged in the plea deal that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him even without the evidence found in his house in the hours after Brown’s body was found in her bed at 503 Churchill Hubbard Road.

Bags of items stolen from her home, including a television and a computer, were found during a search of Clemens’ 420 Churchill Hubbard Road, according to an affidavit

Brown’s autopsy reveals she fought for her life, before the man who once mowed her lawn for her attacked her with her own knife and garden shovel.

Brown was found by Liberty police officers after they went to check on her after her 2017 Cadillac sports utility vehicle was found on fire about a block away on an empty wooded lot on East Street.

In his first county court appearance, Clemens had visible wounds on his forehead, with patches of hair missing. An affidavit states Clemens told police his hair was singed off, and some of his dog’s fur was singed, when he used gasoline he grabbed from his garage to start a fire in Brown’s SUV.

Officers found Brown’s front door unlocked and a glass back door shattered, with a sledge hammer left nearby, according to the affidavit. Brown was in her bed, bloodied with apparent stab wounds around her head and neck, the document states.

The home Brown was killed in is where she and her late husband raised her three daughters.

Brown, known as LaRue, was a Camp Fire girl and Girl Scouts leader, 4-H adviser, chairman of flags at Tod Homestead Cemetery, volunteer at Northside Hospital gift shop, and an usher at the DeYor Fine and Performing Arts Center in Youngstown.

A 1952 graduate of Newton Falls High School, she was the manager of the former 20th Century Restaurant in Youngstown for 25 years, and was a designer and salesperson for Jewelry Connection in Warren for 18 years before retiring in 2005, according to her obituary.