Two and a half years after Anarae Schunk was stabbed to death and Palagor (Paul) Jobi was gunned down in a parking lot, Ashley M. Conrade was sentenced Tuesday in Dakota County District Court to 15 years in prison for her role in the crimes.
Ashley Conrade sentenced in death of Anarae Schunk
Ex-girlfriend of killer will serve about 9 more years.
February 11, 2016 at 3:20AM
Conrade, 26, was the ex-girlfriend of Shavelle Chavez Nelson, who is serving a lifetime sentence without parole for killing Jobi, 23, on Sept. 22, 2013, outside Nina's Bar & Grill in Burnsville. Conrade accepted a plea deal in February 2015 and was supposed to testify against Nelson in the Schunk trial; instead, he pleaded guilty in January to second-degree murder. Although Nelson already is spending the rest of his life in prison, an additional 17 years were added to his sentence.
With credit for 562 days of jail time and state law requiring her to serve two-thirds of her sentence behind bars, Conrade will be out in just under nine years. She was convicted of one felony count of aiding an offender.
Schunk, 20, a University of Minnesota student from Burnsville, had dated Nelson briefly in the summer of 2012 after meeting him at a bus stop. She ended up with Nelson and Conrade at Nina's in the early-morning hours of Sept. 22, 2013, apparently trying to reclaim a debt Nelson owed her. After bar closing, an argument between Nelson and Jobi — formerly strangers — escalated and Jobi was shot six times, including four bullets to the back of his head.
The trio — Nelson, Conrade and Schunk — ended up at Conrade's townhouse in Rosemount, where a neighbor was the last to see Schunk alive early on the morning of Sept. 22.
Conrade admitted she had seen Schunk's body lying on the kitchen floor when she returned home from work that day, authorities have said. That confession came after police confronted her with blood evidence found in her home.
Conrade told police she assisted Nelson in disposing of the body and cleaning the kitchen with bleach.
Schunk's family declared her missing Sept. 23 and searched for her for more than a week. On Sept. 29, her naked body was found in a roadside ditch in Rice County. She had been stabbed 22 times and someone had tried, unsuccessfully, to burn her body.
Nelson was arrested Sept. 24 after he was seen leaving Conrade's home in her car. Conrade repeatedly insisted that she didn't know what had happened to Schunk and that she had no role in her death.
Pat Pheifer • 612-673-7252
