A California mom who killed a retired nurse in an attempted robbery to steal money to send her daughter to cheerleading camp has been convicted nearly a decade after the heinous murder.

Cherie Townsend was convicted of first-degree murder on Thursday for fatally stabbing 66-year-old Susan Leeds 17 times in the neck and upper body as she sat inside her Mercedes-Benz SUV in the Peninsula shopping mall parking garage in broad daylight on May 3, 2018, KTLA reported.

Prosecutors said Townsend, 47, was attempting to steal $2,000 to send her daughter to a cheerleading competition in Florida and had gone to the upscale shopping promenade looking for an “easy target” to rob at the time of the murder.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had initially identified the mom-of-two as a suspe

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