Killer agrees to pay for slain N.J. woman's tombstone

A man convicted of fatally stabbing a Washington Township woman has been ordered to reimburse the victim's father for the cost of her gravestone.

Mark Holloway, 45, of Williamstown, agreed on Friday to pay the $1,300 as part of his sentence for aggravated manslaughter, authorities said. Holloway was also ordered to serve 23 years in state prison for the stabbing death of Kim Barnum, then 43, inside her apartment on Nov. 10, 2011.

Holloway pleaded guilty April 7 to the charge. Prosecutors said he admitted to taking a knife from Barnum and stabbing her through the ribs, puncturing her lung, and severing her aorta.

Holloway and Barnum were in a relationship and had a history of domestic violence, according to investigators.

Holloway on Friday received a concurrent, five-year prison sentence for illegally possessing a sawed-off shotgun during a burglary arrest in November 2010.

Noting Holloway's two prior felony convictions and five disorderly persons convictions, as well as three restraining orders issued against him for the protection of three different women, a judge found the defendant "is not curbing his involvement with criminal activity" as he grows older, according to a news release from the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office.

The victim's father, Alan Barnum, who teaches at a university in South Korea, listened to the sentencing by telephone, prosecutors said. In a letter read during the proceedings, Alan Barnum said that he wished he'd known more about his daughter's domestic turmoil so he "could have been proactive in getting them some counseling" and that her death makes him "remorseful beyond words."

Kim Barnum's slaying was Gloucester County's first homicide in 2011.