Karen Hassan was delivering pizza and chicken wings to a secluded area near the DuPage Airport in November 2006 when Bradley Justice beat her to death with a hammer and stole her money.

Justice, 31, formerly of Sandwich, was sentenced Monday to 81 years in prison for the armed robbery and murder of the St. Charles woman, which DuPage Circuit Judge Peter Dockery called “exceptionally brutal.” Justice pleaded guilty to the killing in April.

Prosecutors asked Dockery for a life sentence, noting that Justice committed the murder to feed his cocaine addiction and attempted to cover it up by hiding Hassan’s body under a truck.

“He’s earned it,” Assistant State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said during his closing arguments at the sentencing. “Karen Hassan suffered immensely from this defendant’s actions. ... He simply had no regard whatsoever for her life.”

Hassan, a 41-year-old mother of four, was working for Rosati’s Pizza at the time of her murder. Her husband died in 1999.

Justice borrowed a cell phone from a bouncer at a nearby strip club at about 8 p.m. Nov. 2, 2006, to order the pizza to be delivered to a house near North Avenue and Powis Road near West Chicago, authorities said.

Shortly before Justice began beating Hassan, she hit redial on her cell phone, and the murder was recorded on the voice mail of her family’s lawyer.

The recording was played at an April hearing during which Dockery ruled that Justice was eligible for a life sentence because the murder was exceptionally brutal or heinous.

At the sentencing, Public Defender Robert Miller said Justice killed Hassan because he panicked when she followed him into the house after she arrived with the food. Justice had left a forged check outside the home to pay for the pizza, Miller said.

It was only when Hassan saw his drugs on a table that Justice grabbed the hammer and began beating her with it, Miller said.

“He ordered that pizza not with the intent to kill the delivery person,” he said. “He ordered it with the intent to commit another crime, check forgery.”

Hassan’s sons, who were present at the sentencing and nearly all of the court hearings since the murder, said they do not believe that account, which Justice gave probation officials for his presentence report. They said they do not believe their mother would have gone into the house.

“Knowing my mom, she would have called the police if she thought he was trying stiff her,” Chris Hassan, 25, said.

Nick Hassan, 23, prepared a written statement that Berlin read during the sentencing.

“We are all lost and empty without our mother,” Nick wrote. “I wake up every morning with the hideous vision of my mother’s brutal murder in my mind.”

Chris, Nick, 21-year-old Andy and 27-year-old Steve said they had hoped for a life sentence, but were satisfied with Dockery’s decision.

“It wasn’t exactly what I expected,” Nick said. “But it’s good enough for me, I guess.”

Police began searching for Hassan after she did not return from the delivery. Her body was found under the truck at about 1 a.m. Nov. 3, 2006.

Justice was arrested later that day at a motel in downstate Tuscola, about 27 miles south of Champaign.

He declined to make a statement at his sentencing, but apologized to the Hassan family in the presentence report.

“In no way can I explain to anyone, including myself, why I did what I did,” he wrote.