Inset, left to right: Marisa J. Rodriguez and Michael Maisner (WJET/WFXP). Background: The location where Maisner’s remains were found (WJET/WFXP).
A 37-year-old woman from Pennsylvania could spend the rest of her life in prison after confessing to murdering a 66-year-old man. She then used a chainsaw, which she bought with his money, to dismember him and burn his remains in his backyard firepit.
On Monday, Erie County Judge Daniel J. Brabender Jr. sentenced Marisa Jean Rodriguez to 40 to 80 years in a state prison for the 2023 murder of Michael Maisner.
Brabender’s sentencing followed Rodriguez’s August guilty plea, acknowledging mental illness, to several crimes, including third-degree murder and corpse abuse.
Initially charged with first-degree murder, Rodriguez had her charges reduced after reaching an agreement with the Erie County District Attorney’s Office, as per court documents reviewed by Law&Crime. She also pleaded guilty to criminal mischief, possession of an instrument of crime, illegal firearm possession, theft, evidence tampering, and unauthorized vehicle use.
Prior to handing down the sentence, which was the maximum allowed under the law, the judge spoke to the harrowing nature of the case.
“This is probably the worst series of facts I’ve probably ever heard in a courtroom,” Brabender said, according to a report from the Erie Times-News.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, this came to light on April 12, 2023, when Maisner’s family, worried after not hearing from him for two weeks, visited his home on the 7000 block of Crestview Drive in Summit Township. Although Maisner was not found, Rodriguez was discovered in the attic, where she had been living for several months prior to the killing.
The next day, authorities went to Maisner’s home for a welfare check.
Upon investigation, authorities discovered missing sections of carpet and padding, suspected human tissue, blood splatters, cleaning supplies, and bleach-stained clothes in Maisner’s home, as reported by Erie-based ABC and Fox affiliate WJET/WFXP, citing the criminal complaint. Additionally, unsettling writings were found on the home’s walls.
In a firepit, investigators found an eyeglass frame piece, a picture frame, carpet foam, carpet, charred human remains and burned bone fragments, later identified through DNA as Maisner’s, Erie News Now reported.
After Rodriguez killed Maisner, she drove the victim’s Cadillac STX about 40 miles to his house in New York, where police arrested Rodriguez the next day on car theft charges. She was extradited to Pennsylvania to face murder charges. During questioning, she reportedly admitted living in Maisner’s attic for up to three months and made comments about him being dead, though she claimed not to know how he died.
The victim’s nephew, Adam Maisner, told Erie News Now that Maisner allowed Rodriguez to stay with him to help around the house.
“He was just a laid-back guy,” Adam Maisner said. “He was waiting to get his hips replaced, and all he was thinking about was golfing and riding his motorcycle after that. That’s all he wanted to do.”
Authorities said they linked the suspect to the killing through her online searches that included the phrases “Mike Maisner,” “how to shoot someone,” “how long does it take to burn a dead body,” “burn a body,” “if you shoot someone in the head they die instantly,” and “cutting a dead body with a chain saw,” WJET/WFXP reported.
In her online account, authorities allegedly found video of the suspect getting the PIN for Maisner’s debit card, a photo of a .357 revolver, and photos and videos of a dead Maisner in a pool of blood with a gunshot wound to the back of the head and torso, the station reported.
Authorities said that the videos show the suspect wearing the black and brown shoes found in Maisner’s car in New York, according to the complaint. She allegedly spent nearly $600 of his money at a Walmart on April 3, 2023, Erie News Now reported — including the purchase of a chainsaw.
During a preliminary hearing in August 2023, Rodriguez reportedly interrupted testimony, saying, “Well, I’m guilty” and later saying, “Then I cut him up,” the Times-News reported.
Rodriguez was initially found incompetent to stand trial in January. Citing court documents, a psychiatrist who diagnosed Rodriguez with schizophrenia during an exam in lockup reportedly said that Rodriguez had made comments about the Bible and “how cats were her best friends.”
The newspaper also reported that she wrote rambling handwritten letters to her lawyer in pencil while in custody at the Erie County Prison.
“I don’t know why I acted the way I did with the body,” she says in one letter. “TRAMITIZED. Still am.”
