GUILTY OR - Aimie Zdrantan, 24, stabbed to death to death in Hillsboro, 29 Aug 2014

Aimie and Petersen had a daughter together three years ago. Steve said that prompted Aimie to want to grow up and leave behind the partying and the drinking. But, he said, Petersen was not ready to make the life changes Aimie made, and that created friction and anger in their relationship.

“He wasn’t the man he should have been in terms of providing,” Steve Zdrantan said. “There was a lot of lying and stealing and not supporting his family and preferring to party and not be the man he should have been and the father he should have been.”

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Steve Zdrantan knew something was wrong when the babysitter called to say his daughter was about an hour late picking up her toddler. It was not like her to be late, he recalled thinking. Then the sitter mentioned the 2-year-old had been dropped off by her father a few hours earlier, and that she heard what sounded like an argument coming from her neighbor Aimie Zdrantan's apartment.

So shortly after 11 a.m. Aug. 29, Steve Zdrantan drove from his Hillsboro home to pick up his granddaughter, Alexis, and check his daughter's apartment, about a mile away in the 1800 block of Southeast Minter Bridge Road. His knocks went unanswered.

He used a spare key to open the locked door and told his granddaughter to wait outside. He immediately spotted the blood on the walls and floor. Then he found his 24-year-old daughter under a blanket in the living room, face down with a knife in her neck.

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Deputies arrested Eric Christopher Petersen, 24, of Hillsboro on a probation violation warrant, and he was booked into the Clark County Jail, according to a press release from the Hillsboro Police Department. Police had identified him as a person of interest in their homicide investigation of the death of 24-year-old Aimie Zdrantan.

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Petersen told police that he and Zdrantan got into an argument at the apartment and that he broke his hand when he punched her in the face... Petersen smashed a large coffee mug over Zdrantan's head, then took a plaque off the wall and used it to repeatedly hit her in the head as well, the affidavit said.

Petersen claimed he put a shirt in Zdrantan's face to silence her, then put a plastic bag over her head because he wanted her to go unconscious... Petersen said he put their crying daughter in the bedroom and then returned to Zdrantan, who was still conscious and moaning. She asked for help and asked Petersen why he was attacking her as he tried putting another shirt in her face to muffle what she was saying, the affidavit said.

According to the court document, Petersen got a large butcher knife, told Zdrantan to pray and stabbed her in the neck... The Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office found that the knife had cut part of Zdrantan's spinal cord, the affidavit said.

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Petersen was indicted on charges of aggravated murder, first-degree sodomy and sex abuse in the killing of Zdrantan. He is being held without bail at the Washington County Jail.

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Eric Christopher Petersen received a life sentence Wednesday for killing his ex-girlfriend, but it was the Washington County Community Corrections Center that drew the most heated denunciation from the prosecutor handling the case.

The gruesome beating and stabbing of Aimie Zdrantan in 2014 wouldn't have happened if the corrections center had focused more on inmate accountability, Senior Deputy District Attorney Bracken McKey told the court.

"It was the result of a broken system that places complete trust in convicted offenders and does so at the expense of community safety," McKey said.

Petersen, 25, killed the mother of his toddler daughter while he had permission to be away from the Community Corrections Center.

He pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated murder and Judge Eric Butterfield sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

As part of a plea deal, prosecutors dismissed additional charges of aggravated murder, first-degree sodomy, sex abuse and burglary.

Petersen, who stared down at the table in front of him for much of the hearing, didn't address the court.

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Steve Zdrantan gave a brief, emotional statement from the witness stand. He told Petersen that another final judgment day awaits him.

Her mother, Alice Alinger, through tears told Petersen that she's sorry for the life he'll miss -- the holidays and birthdays he could have spent with his daughter and family.

"You have lost so much," she said. "Because of one moment, of one terrible choice to take such an amazing person's life who you claimed to love with all of your heart.

"So, I'm sad for you," she said. "But I forgive you."

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The family of a woman killed by her ex-boyfriend while he was on a pass from the Washington County Community Corrections Center has filed a $30 million wrongful death suit against the center and the county.

The lawsuit, filed last week in federal court, alleges center workers knew Petersen posed a threat to Zdrantan but staff still allowed him to leave unsupervised and didn't warn Zdrantan or her family.

The center's policies and lack of training for employees played a significant role in Zdrantan's death, the suit claims. Its staff failed to protect her by not informing her that Petersen would be serving time at the corrections center and by letting him leave without any electronic monitoring, according to the suit.

Attorney John Coletti, who filed suit on behalf of Zdrantan's estate, called the killing "entirely preventable" during an interview Tuesday with The Oregonian/OregonLive. Zdrantan's family, he said, is hoping the suit prompts changes in the corrections center.

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Washington County, facing a $30 million wrongful death suit for giving a work pass to a corrections center inmate who then beat and fatally stabbed his ex-girlfriend, lost a bid Wednesday to shift fault to the inmate.

Lawyers for the county argued that a federal jury should consider Eric Christopher Petersen's role in the killing of his ex-girflriend when deciding who's culpable and sought court permission to file a so-called third-party complaint against Petersen.

Jelderks dismissed Washington County's motion to include Petersen in the wrongful death suit, saying he was bound by the appeals court's analysis.

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