Naomi Bright's family looked on in tears Friday as the man who dumped her lifeless body in a cornfield and later had two teenage boys bury it apologized.

"I tried to save her," Richard Dean Hodge, 44, of Reynolds Mobile Home Park, Pymatuning Township, said before Mercer County Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael Wherry sentenced him to serve 3 to 12 years in state prison on abuse of a corpse and corruption of minors charges. Hodge pleaded guilty Sept. 16.

"I never intended for any of this to happen, and I never intended for kids to be involved," he said.

Mrs. Bright, 22, of New Lyme, Ohio, died of a cocaine overdose, according to the Ashtabula County coroner's office. Her body was found in a field near Andover, Ohio, in May.

According to previous testimony: