A Rhode Island man who was convicted of murdering his date with a shovel on the beach was not prejudiced by ineffective counsel, the state’s highest court ruled.

Gary Tassone was convicted of the 1994 murder of 30-year-old Kendra Hutter. A family that was collecting shells on the beach made the grisly discover of Hutter’s arm protruding from the sand.

The medical examiner determined that Hutter had been struck in the face several times by a sharp metal object, which turned out to be a shovel.

Hutter had been living with her estranged husband and went out on a date. Before she left, she handed her husband a card with the name and number of a man named Gary.

Police questioned Tassone, who spun a series of contradictory tales.

First, he said that Hutter canceled their date. Then, he stated that he had met Hutter that evening, they had sex on the beach, and he took her home safely.

Tassone’s third statement to police was vastly different. He said they were building sand castles on the beach with a shovel. A noise startled Tassone, who accidentally hit Hutter in the face with a shovel.

Tassone admitted to burying Hutter in the sand and leaving, even though “I guess she was still alive because her hands came up and out of the sand.”

Tassone was convicted of first-degree murder in 1997. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The Superior Court denied his application for post-conviction relief based on ineffective assistance of counsel. The Rhode Island Supreme Court upheld the decision in an opinion written by Justice Goldberg.

“Because Tassone has utterly failed to reconstruct the events surrounding counsel’s performance or his perspective, we have no basis whatsoever to evaluate the reasonableness of counsel’s conduct,” he wrote.