NEW YORK — A former yoga instructor maintained his innocence in the stabbing death of his estranged girlfriend, even as a judge sentenced him Friday to 25 years to life in prison for her murder.

A Manhattan jury convicted Paul Cortez of second-degree murder in February for stabbing Catherine Woods nearly 30 times after she tried to end their relationship.

She sustained defensive wounds to her hands and arms. Her neck was slashed twice from behind, leaving wounds so deep that her head was nearly decapitated.

"He grieves for her every day," Cortez's lawyer, Dawn Florio, told the court at his sentencing Friday. "He would like the family to know that he did not kill Catherine Woods and he is very sorry for their loss."

With his hair shorn of the curly ponytail that he wore throughout his trial, Cortez sat at the defense table with his head bowed. On the advice of his lawyers, he did not speak.

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Outside the courtroom, Woods' mother would not comment on Cortez's apology, but said she was "relieved" at the sentence.

"This part of the journey is finished," Donna Woods told reporters. "Now we'll try to learn to live without Catherine."

Woods' roommate, David Haughn, found her body in the bedroom of their Upper East Side apartment on Nov. 27, 2005, less than an hour after he had left the home to run errands.

Haughn attended Friday's sentencing with Woods' parents and sister, who traveled from Columbus, Ohio, to attend the hearing.

Prosecutors introduced evidence of a flurry of phone calls from the day of the murder between Cortez and Woods, who met in 2004 at a gym where Cortez worked as a personal trainer. The calls abruptly ended less than 30 minutes before Woods was killed.

The panel also learned that police found Cortez's fingerprint in Woods' blood on her bedroom wall.

Citing the extremely brutal nature of the crime, District Attorney Peter Casolaro asked the court Friday to impose the maximum sentence, in spite of Cortez's spotless record and glowing character references from friends and family.

Casolaro referred to Cortez's emotional journal entries that were read at trial as evidence of his propensity for violence and a controlling, manipulative attitude toward women. (READ HIS JOURNALS )

"The motive of the crime came completely from the mind of the defendant," said Casolaro, noting that drugs and alcohol were not involved. "This was the defendant's personality as it truly existed."

Casolaro noted that, in his conversations with Cortez's other former girlfriends, he learned that the young man often told women how to dress and subjected them to demeaning sex acts, though the court did not hear evidence to support those claims.