It's a a sunny spring morning and you get in your car to visit your mother. You pull into the driveway and go inside- just as you have done a thousand times before. And you find a nightmare. Someone has attacked your mother; someone has murdered her in her own home.

And then a killer is found and a killer is sentenced.

Is it enough?

For the family and friends of Diana Cooper, the answer is no.

Mathew Maxson pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced yesterday to 15 years to life in prison for choking, stabbing and sticking Cooper with pieces of a glass jar from her kitchen in front of about 20 mourners who wanted to see what would become of him.

It was Cooper's daughter April Searor who found the grisly scene. It is a scene that haunts her and shakes her body with grief.

And it leaves her angry.

"You are a sorry excuse for a human being, and I hope you rot in Hell," she told Maxson in court.

And a room full of Cooper's grieving family and friends are right behind her.

"He robbed this world of a beautiful thing," Cooper's friend for 48 years, Linda Carter, said. "I'd like to make sure he never gets out."

Several members of Maxson's family were present yesterday; some with tears in their eyes -others, like Maxson himself, showing little emotion. They declined to comment, but did not immediately leave the courtroom. Instead, they chose to remain seated for a while, silent.

But Cooper's family and friends had plenty to say about Maxson's -and his family's - tight lips.

"He said the words 'I'm sorry' because he had to," Cooper's daughter Kimberly McMillan said. "There was nothing from his face."

"I don't feel he was remorseful at all," Cooper's son-in-law and April's husband John Searor said.

"I see remorse from the father and brother, but they don't talk," Kathy Emmons, Cooper's niece said. "Everyone knows who we are, how come we don't know who they are?"

Emmons and Melissa Parish, also Cooper's niece, agreed that the defendant showed little remorse.

"I couldn't even hear what he had to say," Emmons said. "Kim and April had no problem facing him and he should have done the same."

Maxson said a few words about how sorry he was before Judge John J. Elliot sentenced him, but Maxson's low voice was barely audible.

Is there anything that would make things better for Cooper's devastated family?

"We need to know why," Emmons said. "We've all talked it over and we want to know why."

"His lawyer talks about a drug problem," Parish said. "That's a big excuse."

"If his family knew he had a drug problem, why did they let him take a job out of state?" Emmons wanted to know.

Maxson's family disappeared in the aftermath and Diana Cooper's supporters filed out of the court room little by little, some still wiping their eyes and others comforting Searor, who left the courtroom soon after the hearing was over.

Others talked to reporters and TV crews, clutching pictures of Cooper and reminiscing about her life.

And now the family's sisters deal with their memories and ponders the future - Maxson's future.

McMillan had promised him that she would be at every parole hearing.

"I will make sure he never gets out," she said.