Pasco mother pleads guilty to shooting daughter's abuser

DADE CITY — Sylvia Neeley, accused of murdering a man she believed had molested her mentally retarded daughter, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a lesser charge of manslaughter.

Neeley, 49, will receive 10 years in prison when she is formally sentenced Oct. 19, though she has several years of credited time stemming from her first conviction in 2000. Then, she was found guilty of second-degree murder but later granted a new trial by an appeals court.

Prosecutors say that on May 24, 1998 in Land O'Lakes, Neeley, then known as Sylvia Maraman, gunned down 73-year-old Arthur Danner, firing five rounds then reloading and shooting him in the groin.

She told authorities Danner had bragged that he had molested her daughter, who was 12 at the time, and could do so again.