By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — The ex-boyfriend who strangled the daughter of an NYU professor and left her body in a university apartment for days was sentenced to 25 years in prison Wednesday.
That's the maximum time Michael Cordero, 23, could get after pleading guilty to manslaughter charges for killing Boitumelo "Tumi" McCallum in August 2007.
McCallum's grieving father, Robert McCallum, said at Cordero's sentencing that he tried to protect his daughter from Cordero by monitoring her phone calls and by telling him "the relationship was over and that you needed to move on."
But his effort was in vain.
"I did everything I could to protect her but you went behind my back to get to her one more time," Robert McCallum added. Both McCallum's parents are NYU professors. She was attending Mills College in Oakland, Calif.
Cordero admitted to strangling Tumi McCallum at her mother's NYU apartment when she was home on break.
Her body was found several days later.
Cordero's defense attorney was in tears as she asked the judge to have sympathy for her client.
The confessed killer said he did not expect forgiveness from Tumi McCallum's family, but wanted "to let you know that I deal with this every day."
"If I don't die from natural causes," he said. "I will die from the loneliness and regret that I feel every day."
Tumi McCallum's sobbing mother elected to have her statement read by the prosecutor.
"My beloved Tumi was silenced forever at a young age because she made a wrong choice of who to share her love with," Teboho Moja's statement read. Her body "is buried and memories of her charming smile live in our hearts."
