SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A 21-year-old suburban Syracuse man is scheduled to be sentenced for killing his former girlfriend while she was home from college for Thanksgiving break.

Sentencing for Steven Pieper of Liverpool is set for Tuesday morning in Onondaga County Court in Syracuse.

Pieper pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder in the November slaying of 20-year-old Jenni-Lyn Watson. Pieper admitted strangling and suffocating Watson inside her parents’ home in the town of Clay on Nov. 19 and dumping her body in a wooded area in a nearby park.

Watson had returned home from Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., for Thanksgiving the day before she was killed. Searchers found her body eight days later.

Pieper is expected to be sentenced to 23 years to life in prison.