Baldwin man sentenced for murder tells judge he was 'the devil' that day

A Baldwin man told a judge Friday he “turned into the devil himself” when he murdered a 25-year-old woman in what authorities called a savage hammer bludgeoning after an argument about payment for sex.

Raphael Oyague, 37, also said in Nassau County Court that killing Deanna Wingender in November 2016 was “unforgivable” and he’d been addicted to drugs at the time.

“I turned into the devil himself and took away Deanna’s life,” he said of the Syosset woman. "To take another human being’s life is such an awful feeling. … I take full responsibility for my actions.”

But acting state Supreme Court Justice Felice Muraca told Oyague he deserved every day of the 20 years to life in prison he gave him Friday, adding: “I don’t think you have any real understanding of what you did that night.”

Oyague pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in May.

Police had arrested him on Nov. 23, 2016 after two delivery workers found the victim’s body in the parking lot outside Oyague’s Grand Avenue apartment. Authorities said they followed a trail of blood to his back door after answering a 911 call about the discovery of the woman's remains. 

A car service dropped Wingender at Oyague’s apartment on the night of Nov. 22, 2016, before he killed her about 10 p.m. and then dumped her body, according to authorities.

They said the two connected on Craiglist, and after their payment dispute, Oyague fatally beat Wingender in the head and torso.

“She met the wrong person online. He brutally killed her and then threw her out like a piece of garbage,” the victim’s mother, Nancy Wingender, said in court Friday.

The Syosset woman told the judge her kind-hearted daughter and only child had been her “whole world.” She said her daughter had gotten a bipolar disorder diagnosis after high school and also fell victim to Long Island’s opioid epidemic.

“She was a good person who had gotten lost along the way,” Wingender said while wearing a pin with her daughter’s smiling face on it.

The mother also had words for her daughter’s killer.

“You are soulless and evil,” she said. "I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you never get out of prison.”