Lisa Price had her 15 minutes of fame two years ago.
All it got her was a prison term and a lifetime of shame.
Price, 37, of 21st Street near McKean, became a media star when she played the role of a grief-stricken caretaker after reporting that her 6-year-old foster daughter had disappeared in 1998.
For three days, Price did interviews, pleading for the safe return of little Jacqueline Veney.
She was putting on a tragic act, said Assistant District Attorney Gail Fairman.
Price later told Homicide Detective Aaron Booker that she beat Jacqueline, a first-grader, to death and tossed the child's body into the Schuylkill on Sept. 21, 1998.
Yesterday, Common Pleas Judge William J. Mazzola sent Price up the river for 15 to 30 years for a third-degree murder conviction, an abuse of corpse rap and for beating the girl's 3-year-old brother, Sam Harper, who was also in her care.
Fairman said Price "manipulated an entire community" with her call for help in finding Jacqueline, who had lived with her for two years.
"She reveled in the attention," Fairman added. "You have to use the fact that the other child was also assaulted to show that this was not an aberration or a moment of panic."
The prosecutor said Jacqueline was probably burned before her body was hurled into the river, but they couldn't prove that "because the body had decomposed by the time it was discovered in the river."
At the trial, defense lawyer Charles P. Mirarchi III said Price did not "specifically intend to kill Jacqueline."
Price told police she hit Jacqueline several times, but denied trying to kill her.
"I got rid of the evidence," Price told Booker. "I did not want my family and friends to know what a horrible thing I did. I regret what I did and I'm sorry."
Price said she beat Jacqueline because the little girl had told her fiance that she was having an affair with another man.
Jacqueline's body was found in the river on the fourth day of Price's media blitz.
The girl's biological mother, also named Jacqueline Veney, had given up the girl and her brother because of a drug problem, police said.
Veney said she was within a few days of regaining custody of her daughter when the killing occurred.
She has sued the city in federal court, contending that officials were negligent and failed to protect her children.
