Autopsy: Woman was stabbed 45 times

CAVE CREEK - An autopsy on a murdered Cave Creek woman shows she was stabbed 45 times.

Mary Elizabeth Hermann, found dead in a burning Cave Creek home on July 8, had stab wounds all over her body, including 31 in her neck, according to the autopsy report released this week by the Maricopa County Medical Examiner.

Court documents say she was partially decapitated.

Maricopa County sheriff's deputies found Hermann's nude body July 8 on a bed in an unburned section of a home in the 5500 block of East Seven Palms Lane.

The autopsy, performed on July 10, said the 29-year-old Hermann also had eight stab wounds to her head and four wounds to her stomach.

Maricopa County sheriff's deputies arrested Cave Creek resident Justin Wade Lunsford, 26, on July 14 on suspicion of murder. He is charged with one count of first-degree murder, two counts of arson, and two counts of cruelty to animals. Lunsford is being held on $600,000 bond.

Lunsford is scheduled to have a trial management conference on Sept. 17 in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix. He was arraigned on July 30.

Lunsford has one criminal case on his record. In March 2004, Maricopa County Superior Court ordered Lunsford to pay $4060.02 in criminal damages to three women after he jumped on their cars in a parking lot in September 2003. Two of the women, who declined to be named, said they did not know Lunsford and did not believe he targeted them.

Justin Wade Lunsford is charged with one count of first-degree murder, two counts of arson and two counts of cruelty to animals.