Roseville mom who attacked kids gets prison

The Roseville woman will serve at least 11 years for using a knife and axe on her daughters.

By ANTHONY LONETREE

A Roseville mother who pleaded guilty to trying to stab her two young daughters to death was sentenced Thursday to nearly 17 years in prison.

"I'm sorrier than I can say that all this happened," Sylvia Sieferman, 61, a former systems analyst and Boston University professor, said in a brief statement to Ramsey County District Judge Paulette Flynn.

Sieferman, whose life began to unravel after a 2004 layoff from the former Guidant Corp. (now Boston Scientific), must serve at least 11 years in prison under the plea agreement negotiated in May.

Flynn told her the August attacks were an "unspeakable tragedy" and that "the only positive is that you were not successful" in killing the two girls.

Sieferman's daughters -- both 11 at the time of the attacks and now being raised by a relative of their mother -- did not appear in court, and offered no victim impact statements.

Two months ago, at her plea hearing, Sieferman spoke of how she had been depressed, and drinking heavily, and had set out to kill the girls out of fear that she would leave them to be raised by strangers if she killed herself.

She took a butcher knife and a pillow to daughter Linnea's room, and after putting the pillow up to Linnea's face so the child wouldn't see anything, cut her throat. She then attacked Linnea's sister, Hannah, with an axe.

Sieferman said she didn't recall the second attack.

Officers arrived at the family's townhouse in the 400 block of County Road C to find Sieferman alone on the front steps, bleeding heavily from a self-inflicted stab wound to the neck, yelling, "Kill me, kill me."

Her injuries required two months of hospitalization.

Paul Rogosheske, her attorney, said at the time of Sieferman's plea hearing that he believed she had a viable mental illness defense, but that she had decided to plead guilty to spare her daughters the ordeal of a trial.