PICKENS — A Liberty woman charged with murdering four family members was sentenced to four life sentences last week after pleading guilty but mentally ill in the killings.

Susan Hendricks, who was indicted last year in the October 2011 shooting deaths of her sons Matthew and Marshall Hendricks, ex-husband Mark Hendricks and stepmother Linda Burns, was sentenced by judge Letitia Verdin after pleading guilty on Friday.

Prosecutors had argued that Hendricks staged the killings to look like a murder-suicide, and had multiple life insurance policies on the victims.