The story she told herself was mercy. The court called it evil.

A Michigan mother who claimed she made a “murder pact” with her teenage son—then slit his throat to finish the job—was sentenced Monday to spend the rest of her life behind bars. Katie Lee, 40, received a sentence of 60 to 90 years in prison for the February 2025 killing of her son, Austin Pikaart, inside their Holland apartment.

Speaking at her sentencing in Ottawa County, Lee continued to insist she was “saving him.”

“I never intended for him to suffer in any way,” she told the court, according to local NBC affiliate WOOD. “In my broken thinking, I was saving him from it.”

Lee pleaded guilty in October to torture and second-degree murder. Prosecutors said the crime unfolded after Austin, who did not want to turn 18, allegedly tried to end his life by overdosing on medication. Lee said she attempted to do the same—but when neither died, she escalated.

She told investigators she “couldn’t get her son to stop breathing,” so she used a knife to cut his throat while he was unconscious. Police later found additional stab wounds on Austin’s arm.

During a chilling 911 call, Lee told dispatchers that her son had asked her to help him stop breathing and had been trying for some time. Police reports later echoed that claim, noting Lee said Austin didn’t want to become an adult.

Officers were called to the Bay Pointe Apartment Complex around 4:15 a.m. and said they were immediately confronted by Lee holding a knife. After her arrest, police said she expressed disappointment that officers didn’t kill her at the scene.

“Upon being taken into custody, Lee stated that officers were supposed to kill her … so that she could be with her son,” police reported.

At sentencing, Lee blamed deteriorating mental health and what she described as a digital echo chamber. She told the court she rarely left her apartment and struggled to distinguish reality from delusion.

“With the algorithms on my phone being nothing but the ‘world is ending’ content, I fell so deeply into an echo chamber that we were living in a different reality,” she said. “And it was a terrible one.”

She claimed she will be “forever punished” by Austin’s death, saying she will spend the rest of her life in prison replaying what she could have done differently.

The judge was unmoved.

Calling Lee’s actions “nothing less than pure evil,” the court handed down a sentence that ensures she will almost certainly die behind bars.

In the gallery, Austin’s family wore shirts reading “Justice for Austin.” Outside the courtroom, grief hardened into fury.

“She’s not a mom, she’s a monster,” Austin’s aunt, Alisa Pikaart, told reporters. “She’s getting what she deserves.”

For the court, there was no pact—only a boy who never reached adulthood, and a mother whose version of salvation ended in blood.