Jurors heard Osborne describe a 2022 strangulation before weighing later threats, witness testimony and the evidence surrounding her 2024 death.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Four years before Joseph Nevera was sentenced to life without parole for murdering Kimberly Osborne, a sheriff’s deputy recorded Osborne describing another encounter with Nevera: She said he had climbed on top of her, put his hands around her neck and choked her until she blacked out.
That January 2022 recording became a crucial part of Nevera’s 2026 murder trial because it allowed Osborne, who could no longer testify, to describe earlier violence in the relationship in her own recorded words. Prosecutors placed the footage alongside later threats, testimony that Osborne was preparing to leave Nevera, evidence about her Mother’s Day 2024 disappearance and an account from Nevera’s longtime friend, who said Nevera admitted killing her and then showed him her body. The jury convicted Nevera of first-degree murder on April 21 and denied mercy one day later. Circuit Judge Cindy Scott imposed the resulting life-without-parole sentence Aug. 10.
The body-camera footage was shown as the prosecution neared the end of its case. Osborne told the responding deputy that the confrontation had begun after Nevera had been drinking and wanted a bottle of liquor. She described losing consciousness while being choked and waking as Nevera shook her. In other testimony about the earlier incident, jurors heard that she had tried to separate herself from him inside the residence. Nevera was arrested in connection with that domestic disturbance. The murder prosecution used the episode as evidence of a documented history between the two, rather than asking jurors to evaluate the 2024 killing in isolation.
Prosecutors then connected that earlier history to warnings witnesses said Nevera made before Osborne’s death. Testimony indicated that Nevera had threatened to choke her and said she could end up “in a grave or a hole in the ground.” Detective Joshua Ward told jurors that the couple had been fighting on the day Osborne disappeared and that a witness heard Nevera threaten that she would never be found. By the time those statements were presented at trial, investigators had already recovered Osborne from a shallow grave. The state argued that the pattern of violence and the later threats supported its account of why and how the killing occurred.
The prosecution’s theory was that Osborne was trying to end the relationship and that Nevera killed her by strangulation on May 12, 2024. Friends and relatives testified about turmoil between the two and about Osborne’s efforts to separate from Nevera. Prosecutor Gabrielle Mucciola argued that the fatal violence represented an escalation of conduct jurors had heard Osborne describe from 2022. The defense challenged that conclusion, emphasizing the limits of the forensic evidence recovered after Osborne’s body had remained undiscovered for months and arguing that the state had not produced physical evidence that conclusively tied Nevera to the act of killing her.
The case therefore depended on far more than the earlier domestic-violence recording. John Claburn supplied the testimony that most directly connected Nevera to Osborne’s body on the night she vanished. Claburn, a close friend of Nevera who also knew Osborne, testified that Nevera came to his camper and announced that he had killed her. Claburn said he initially did not believe him. He then followed Nevera to his truck, where Nevera opened a door and showed him Osborne’s body. The account gave prosecutors a witness who said he saw the victim with Nevera only hours after she was last known to be alive.
Claburn’s credibility became one of the sharpest disputes of the trial because he did not immediately tell investigators what he knew. More than a year and a half passed before he gave authorities the account that he later repeated before the jury. He was charged as an accessory after the fact. Defense lawyers argued that a witness facing his own criminal exposure had reasons to shift blame and questioned why someone who claimed to know about a murder would remain silent for so long. Prosecutors responded that Claburn had not asked for or received immunity and remained subject to punishment for his failure to come forward.
Investigators also examined whether physical evidence supported Claburn’s involvement beyond what he admitted. The Dominion Post reported that soil recovered from his work boots did not match dirt from the site where Osborne was buried. Claburn denied helping to dig or fill the grave, while acknowledging that he had failed to alert police. That distinction was important to the prosecution’s treatment of him: Claburn was presented as a witness who had concealed information after the killing, not as the person who committed the murder. His eventual guilty plea to being an accessory after the fact reflected that separate role.
Osborne’s body had been found in November 2024, months after relatives reported her missing. A man practicing target shooting with a bow came upon the remains in woods near Little Indian Creek Road. The burial site was only about two miles from the home Osborne had shared with Nevera. The condition of the remains complicated the medical evidence, and the defense highlighted the absence of a definitive initial cause-of-death finding. Prosecutors argued that the forensic limitations did not erase the other evidence: the prior violence, threats, relationship conflict, Claburn’s account and the circumstances surrounding the location where Osborne was found.
Closing arguments crystallized that dispute. Defense attorney Christopher Wilson told jurors there was no physical evidence directly proving Nevera killed Osborne and focused heavily on Claburn’s delay in reporting the alleged confession. Mucciola argued that the evidence should be considered together. According to local courtroom coverage, she told jurors the earlier strangulation mattered because, in the state’s view, the violence that Osborne had survived before became fatal in 2024. The jury deliberated for about three hours before finding Nevera guilty of first-degree murder.
The verdict did not determine whether Nevera would ever be eligible for release. Jurors returned the following day for a separate mercy proceeding. They heard from Osborne’s relatives about her life and about the consequences of her death. Her mother, Rose Osborne, described waiting for months while hoping her daughter was still alive. Osborne’s teenage daughter spoke about losing not only her mother but ordinary future experiences the two would have shared. The defense asked for mercy, which would have preserved a parole possibility. The prosecution opposed it. The jury decided on life without mercy.
That April decision dictated the central feature of the sentence Scott imposed in August: Nevera will not be eligible for parole. The sentencing hearing included additional victim-impact statements from members of Osborne’s family. Mucciola said after the hearing that relatives appeared relieved to have that phase of the case behind them. The legal resolution came more than four years after the 2022 police encounter that had documented Osborne’s description of being choked and more than two years after her disappearance.
The case also generated a separate episode involving Claburn after he testified. His camper was burned, and investigators arrested David Dewalt on first-degree arson and witness-retaliation charges. Authorities said Claburn had received threats before the fire and that surveillance footage placed Dewalt at the property shortly before it occurred. Dewalt denied setting the fire, according to investigators. Those allegations were separate from Nevera’s murder trial, but the incident drew further attention to Claburn’s role as the state’s central witness.
Osborne was 48 and the mother of three children. Her obituary remembered her as a self-employed health care provider who enjoyed karaoke and was known among family and friends for helping others. The murder trial necessarily concentrated on the violence surrounding the end of her life, but the mercy proceedings gave relatives an opportunity to describe the person behind the evidence. Nevera’s life-without-parole sentence now stands as the legal outcome of a case in which prosecutors used Osborne’s own earlier recorded account as one part of a broader chain of evidence that jurors found sufficient to prove murder beyond a reasonable doubt.
Author note: Last updated September 22, 2026.