District Attorney Jim Farrell announced that Lars Ryder, age 23, of Monticello, N.Y. entered a plea of guilty to Manslaughter in the 1st Degree, a class B violent felony, in Sullivan County Court today under the terms of a plea agreement that will see him spend the next 25 years in state prison and 5 years of post release supervision at the end of his prison time.

Farrell, said that Ryder admitted to killing his girlfriend of nearly two years, Elizabeth Mucci, 31, of Monticello and Hankins, N.Y., on the evening of April 26, 2011, at the apartment they shared on Fraser Road in the Town of Thompson after a physical domestic dispute between them.

Ryder also admitted to attempting to conceal the homicide by putting Mucci’s body in the woods and then trying to burn it. After that did not succeed, Ryder returned to the woods, the next day, and dismembered Mucci’s body in order to hide it.

Police only recovered one of Mucci’s legs and no cause of death was ever forensically established. Under the terms of the plea, Ryder admitted to acting under an extreme emotional disturbance at the time of the homicide which reduced the murder to manslaughter.

Ryder was arrested on May 13, 2011, after an investigation by the New York State Police into the disappearance of Mucci. Farrell said “this plea agreement, considering all the facts and circumstances known to me, is consistent with justice and the facts of the homicide. In addition, Elizabeth’s family, who knew Ryder and his family for nearly twenty years, were in agreement with the plea and that was a significant factor is agreeing to the 25 year state prison sentence.” Ryder will be sentenced on June 28, 2012.