Charleston , Kanawha County , West Virginia

A former shoe salesman who murdered his co-worker and buried her remains in his yard learned his fate before a packed courtroom on Thursday.

Charles March, 61, came into court for the last time. He's now able to walk after a failed suicide attempt, and was cleanly shaven and looking much thinner. He cried and begged for forgiveness for the murder of Kathy Goble.

"I am very sorry for the Goble family and for my family, but most of all I am sorry for Kathy for hurting her and causing her death. Maybe some day, in some other world, she will find it in her heart to forgive me," March said to the court, reading from a prepared letter.

"I live with the guilt everyday and I'll live with that guilt for as long as I live," he said.

Bringing in a Smithsonian Institute forensic anthropologist, the prosecution laid out all evidence as to why they thought March should die in prison. Graphic pictures of the remains found buried in March's yard underneath 30 cinder blocks were on display. March kept his back to the screen, and at time closed his eyes and broke down in tears. A packed courtroom listened as it was described in detail how he strangled her and dismembered her in his bathtub with a saw.

"He started multiple times. He would start and he would go in that one femur for instance. He would go 24 or 25 millimeters into it, and for whatever reason, he'd start beside that. He'd start beside that and he would cut some four, four different locations, trying to get through that, until finally you'd get close enough and you'd bend the leg and it would break," said Dr. Doug Owsley of the Smithsonian.

"You talk about a man or monster, what do you think Kathy Goble saw when she was looking up and Mr. March was crushing, this was his words, 'I could feel her throat crushing under my hands,'" said assistant prosecutor Fred Giggenbach.

For two years, March went about his life as family and friends searched for her and any clue as to where she might be.

"Charles March let her body lay there for two years, came to work everyday for two years. Walked right by a picture of her," said family spokesperson Billy Herrald.

"He was walking by the posters and the pictures that said 'where is Kathy?'" said Giggenbach.

After more than an hour of testimony, it only took seconds for Judge Duke Blooms to rule that March would spend the rest of his life in prison, with no chance of ever seeing a parole board.

"Your monstrous acts towards Ms. Goble are in fact the pure definition of evil," said Bloom.

"However long I have, I pray everyday for Kathy's soul and some understanding from God to what caused me to do this. I don't have any answers and perhaps I never will but I will continue to search," March said.

Prosecutors says Goble's family will be giving her remains to the Smithsonian for educational purposes.

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Charles March was sentenced to life in prison without mercy Thursday in Kanawha County Circuit Court.

In December 2012, March pleaded guilty of first-degree murder in the killing and dismemberment of his Kelley’s Mens Shop co-worker, Kathy Goble. March went against the advice of his lawyer and pleaded guilty to the capital offense. In return, the state dropped the concealment of a human body charge.

Kanawha County sheriff’s officials said just after March’s arrest that he had confessed to strangling Goble, cutting her body up in the bathtub, and then burying pieces of her body beside his trailer in Chesapeake.

Goble’s body was found in April 2012 by March’s son, two years and one day after her disappearance.

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