Former Hofstra University student Shaun Alexander was sentenced Tuesday to 30 years to life in prison for kidnapping and killing a fellow classmate, after speaking publicly for the first time since his arrest and apologizing to the victim's mother.

Before a packed courtroom in Mineola, Alexander turned and faced Lisa Kolb, 48, of Kingston, Mass., whose son Max he murdered nearly two years ago.

"I, Shaun, have seen the silent tears you shed,” Alexander told her, reading a statement in a halting voice. "... I have seen all of this and I wish to reach out. To reach out and to relieve you of the anguish and intense sadness that is consuming you and add it to my own. To take all that I have done to hurt you, all that I have denied you and add it to my own heavy burden that I will forever carry.”

Lisa Kolb, who earlier in the day told the court about the pain she felt from the loss of her son, said she was upset that Alexander had the last words and his speech made her so angry that she wished she had pressed for the death penalty.

"The fact that he is living, breathing, and walking this earth is aggravating,” Kolb said after the sentencing.

Alexander, 25, of Dunwoody, Ga., admitted earlier that he lured Max Kolb, 20, a casual friend, to the Econo Lodge in Hicksville on April 25, 2001, on the pretense of needing someone to talk to. After they arrived at the motel, Alexander said he drugged Kolb and then bound and gagged him. Before Alexander stabbed Kolb with a kitchen knife, he took off Kolb's clothes and photographed him in various stages of undress.

Alexander put Kolb's body in the back of his Land Rover, which he drove for a week before burying the body in the backyard of a Long Beach home he had rented.

While Alexander accepted responsibility Tuesday for Kolb's death, he said he is a victim of mental illness. In his speech, which Nassau County Court Judge Richard A. LaPera cut short, Alexander said he failed and allowed a monster inside him, named Jared, to escape and kill Kolb.

"While I, Shaun, do and will always accept full accountability for the loss of your son, the being standing before you here today, Shaun, no took your son from you. I no ended Max's life beat,” Alexander said in his 23-page handwritten statement.

LaPera did not say why he cut off Alexander's speech, but his law secretary, David Ayres, said afterward it was because Alexander was rambling.

Alexander's attorney, Marc Gann of Carle Place, had said Alexander suffered from multiple personality disorder. The psychological condition, also known as dissociative identity disorder, is defined by the American Psychiatric Association as the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states that recurrently take control of behavior. Each personality state may be experienced as if it has a distinct personal history, self-image and identity.

On Jan. 6, the day the trial was scheduled to begin, Alexander pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and second-degree kidnapping. As a part of the plea deal, LaPera sentenced Alexander to 25 years to life for the murder and 5 years for the kidnapping and ordered that the sentences are to run consecutively.

Assistant District Attorney Fred Klein said his office plans to submit a letter to the New York State Division of Parole asking the panel never to release Alexander because he is a danger to society.

Had her son lived, Lisa Kolb told the court, they would have looked forward to his graduation from Hofstra in May. "Now that the hearings have ended and the sentencing is done I fear the crushing emptiness of my life without Max. I am so devastatingly lonely without him,” Lisa Kolb said.