He fled to Mexico after killing his girlfriend in a Utah cemetery nine years ago. Now, he’ll spend at least 15 years in prison.

A man who brutally stabbed his girlfriend to death in a Huntsville cemetery nearly a decade ago was sentenced to prison on Wednesday.

An Ogden jury in November found 42-year-old Gutberto Heras-Corrales guilty of first-degree felony murder for killing 26-year-old Noemi Rodriguez on Christmas 2008.

Though he contested the evidence at trial, Heras-Corrales admitted during his Wednesday sentencing hearing that he was the one who killed his girlfriend, a mother of three.

“I feel a lot of remorse for this case, for what happened,” the man said through a Spanish interpreter. “I would like to ask for forgiveness and to say I will accept my sentence, whatever it is.”

Second District Judge Joseph Bean sentenced Heras-Corrales to a 15-year-to-life prison term — the only sentence available under the law.

Though Rodriguez’s mother had asked for Heras-Corrales to be locked away for the rest of his life, Bean told the woman that his hands were tied by Utah’s indeterminate sentencing structure. A parole board will ultimately decide how much time Heras-Corrales spends in prison.

At Wednesday’s sentencing, Deputy Weber County Attorney Dee Smith noted the loss that Rodriguez’s children have experienced in the past nine years. They witnessed domestic violence at the hands of Heras-Corrales, he said, had their home burned down, and never saw their mother again after she didn’t return from work that day.

After their mother’s death, they were raised by their grandparents.

“I want to emphasize the impressive quality of her children,” Smith said, “and encourage them to not let this negatively affect them moving forward.”

Rodriguez was found dead on Dec. 26, 2008, by a snowplow driver who was clearing the cemetery roads for a funeral, according to preliminary hearing testimony. She had been stabbed 32 times, mostly in her neck, chest and face, and the snow around her was stained with her blood.

Murder charges were filed against Heras-Corrales in 2009, but he fled to Mexico and was not brought back to Utah to face trial until 2015.

Rodriguez’s son, Victor Hernandez, testified in a 2016 preliminary hearing that he last saw his mother early that Christmas morning, when she kissed him on the forehead, told him “Merry Christmas” and left for work. He was 11 years old at that time.

Prosecutors say she met up with Heras-Corrales later that afternoon, and both their cellphones “pinged” a tower in Huntsville in the upper Ogden Valley later that day.

Hernandez testified that before his mother’s death, he witnessed escalating physical abuse by Heras-Corrales, which included the man holding a knife to her stomach. Once, when Rodriguez grabbed a broomstick to defend herself, Hernandez said his mother’s boyfriend told her in Spanish, “I’ll get revenge.”

In addition to the murder case, Heras-Corrales is charged in Davis County with burning down Rodriguez’s mobile home in Layton five days before she was murdered. That arson case is pending.