Calling the case “one of the most horrible he had heard in his courtroom,” D.C. Superior Court Judge Gerald Fisher sentenced Roderick Ridley, a 34-year-old D.C. resident, to 74 1/2 years in prison yesterday — despite the fact that a jury could not reach a verdict on the charge of murder.

In 2008, Ridley was on the lam from U.S. Marshals after escaping from a halfway house. A few days after his escape, his ex-girlfriend, 33-year-old Tiffany Gates, called the authorities to tell them Ridley was trying to break into her D Street SE home; before police could make it to the scene, Gates was brutally stabbed to death. The jury in the trial was unable to come to a verdict on whether or not Ridley had killed Gates that day, but did convict Ridley on 26 other counts. The Post reports that despite a lengthy history of domestic abuse and some 400 phone calls made to Gates by Ridley from prison after he was instructed to break off contact, a lack of DNA evidence and witnesses left the jury deadlocked.

Ridley will reportedly be retried on the murder charge in the near future.