Man Who Suffocated Girlfriend With Bubble Wrap Sentenced To 45 Years

A South Carolina man was sentenced to 45 years in prison for suffocating his girlfriend to death using bubble wrap.

Nick Evangelista, 55, was found guilty by a Beaufort County jury Thursday in the murder of girlfriend, Rebecca Melton, at a Hilton Head Island apartment in August 2014, WHDH-TV reports. Evangelista made a videotaped confession for police in which he says he remembers placing green bubble wrap around the face and neck of Melton in the apartment bedroom before he claimed to pass out.

After suffocating her in the bubble wrap for several minutes, Evangelista claims he came to and she wasn’t breathing.

“It takes three minutes to five minutes to make someone stop breathing with bubble wrap. The sheer violence of the act and the vulnerability of the victim in her naked and unarmed state made it a horrible act,” Assistant Solicitor Hunter Swanson said in a statement during the three-day trial.

Evangelista also claimed that he didn’t recall there being any struggle during the murder.

“I know at one point I was holding bubble wrap over her mouth and I blacked out. When I came to I don’t think she was breathing,” Evangelista said in his taped confession to South Carolina police.

After the murder, Evangelista called in to his physician’s assistant office to reschedule all his appointments and was not heard from again. He then stole Melton’s Jeep and spent several weeks in Florida sending selfies to an escort. He was ultimately pulled over driving her Jeep and arrested in Pensacola, Florida, nearly six weeks after the murder.

Evangelista described a toxic relationship in which police were called to their apartment several times for fights provoked by both Evangelista and Melton. “When she drank, she got ugly and violent and crazy,” he said in the confession.