(MSC News)--Life in prison.

KQ2-TV reports that’s the sentence handed down Monday in a Buchanan County courtroom to 46-year-old James Eackles in the beating death of his girlfriend last year.

Eackles pleaded guilty in December to a charge of second-degree murder in the death of Carol Cunningham.

Prosecutors said she died from a blow to the head.

Her body was found in a home the two shared in the two-thousand block of South 15th Street on February 1st last year.