College Professor Beats, Tortures Colleague She 'Loved' With Fire Poker, Garden Shears

A Massachusetts college professor will spend at least a decade in prison for using a fire poker and garden shears to beat and torture a female colleague she claimed to love.

Rie Hachiyanagi, 50, an art professor at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, was sentenced Wednesday to 10 to 12 years in a Massachusetts state prison for the 2019 attack on fellow professor Lauret Savoy, People reported.

Hachiyanagi pleaded guilty in Franklin Superior Court last week to nine charges in connection with the brutal attack, including three counts of armed assault with intent to murder a person over 60 and one count each of home invasion, mayhem and entering in the nighttime with intent to commit a felony, the district attorney said.

Hachiyanagi had gone to the victim’s home uninvited on the night of Dec. 23, 2019, and claimed to need emotional support because of a breakup, prosecutors said.

When the victim let her in, Hachiyanagi beat and tortured Savoy with a rock, a fireplace poker and pruning shears in an attack that lasted four hours. Hachiyanagi only stopped when the victim managed to convince her to summon help, prosecutors said.

When responders arrived, Hachiyanagi initially claimed that she had found Savoy in a pool of blood and barely breathing. The art professor also told police that she saw signs of a struggle and that she was covered in blood because she had been holding Savoy, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. Police found no signs of an intruder.

Savoy was rushed to the hospital, where she was treated for broken bones in her nose and eye area and numerous lacerations and puncture wounds on her head and face, a state police report said. Some of the physical trauma she suffered was permanent.

Savoy said she "thought she was going to die at the hands of Hachiyanagi," according to the state police report.

When Savoy asked Hachiyanagi why she was attacking her, Hachiyanagi replied "that she loved her for many years and she should have known," the report said.

Savoy said she managed to convince Hachiyanagi to summon help by "playing along" and saying she had the same feelings, according to authorities.

During Hachiyanagi's trial, Savoy detailed the extent of her injuries and the pain and terror she experienced that night.

“I’ve struggled to find a word that could hold in its meaning both the attack and my experience of it. The closest I found is this: ‘severe or excruciating pain or suffering (of body or mind); anguish, agony, torment; the infliction of such.’ This is a definition of torture,” Savoy told the court.

“The emotional, physical, financial and professional impacts of this crime have been huge and they continue. Now the defendant’s violation of me is becoming part of a public persona that I did not choose. She has invaded my privacy, my career, my life,” she added.

Hachiyanagi has no criminal history, but Judge Francis Flannery described the attack as one of the "most horrific set of facts" he has ever heard, according to a release from the Northwestern District Attorney's office.

The judge also praised Savoy, saying, “I’m going to remember that she had the presence of mind and the courage to convince her attacker not to kill her. As her body was failing her, she used her mind to save herself. That’s remarkable.”