Lausanne man gets 14 years for strangling wife

A Swiss court on Friday sentenced a civil servant from Assens near Lausanne in the canton of Vaud to 14 years in prison for strangling his wife to death at their home and burying her body in a nearby forest.

Published: 20 February 2015 10:57 CET

Lausanne man gets 14 years for strangling wife

The trial took place in Yverdon. Photo: Sjaak Kempe

The 46-year-old engineer was sentenced following a trial this week in Yverdon-les-Bains in which he admitted killing his wife in October 2012 after she threatened to leave him.

In addition to murder, the court found him guilty of breaching his duty of care by leaving their three-month old baby son alone for several hours while he buried the mother and attempted to establish an alibi.

Following extensive marital difficulties, the man was staying with friends on the night in question when he snuck out of the house and back to his own home, where he strangled his wife in her sleep, reports newspaper 20 Minutes.

After burying her in the forest and making it appear as though his home had been burgled, he returned to his friends’ house, leaving his baby son alone.

The man acted “with the contempt for life that characterizes an assassin. He thought about his actions, everything was calculated,” prosecutor Donovan Tesaury said in court, reports news agency ATS.

According to the prosecution, the man was worried he would be ruined financially and lose his house should his wife leave him.

The defence argued this was a crime of passion, liable for a lesser ten-year sentence.

His actions were “an act of desperation from an exhausted man who for a few seconds undoubtedly lost sight of what he was doing”, said his lawyer Manuela Ryter Godel.

Speaking in court to his wife’s family – who for six weeks believed the victim was ‘missing’ – the man expressed regret for his crime.

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Two victims suffered serious wounds, police said. The attacker was also in hospital being treated for injuries that investigators said were self-inflicted.

The man was “believed to be of foreign origin” and was aged about 40, police said in a statement which added that he was thought to have acted alone.

All of the injured remained hospitalised late Wednesday.

Armed with “sharpened or pointed” metal weapons, the man first lashed out at a passer-by at the railway station in the town of 12,000 people in the Aargau canton, about 60 kilometres (38 miles) west of Zurich, police said.

He then wounded several people seemingly at random before entering a house, police added.

Among those attacked were two teachers from the Zofingen cantonal school, the institution’s director, Patrick Strossler, told 20minuten.ch news website.

The Aargauer Zeitung newspaper quoted one man as saying his pregnant wife had been among those attacked. She was cut in the face but her life was not threatened.

After two hours of negotiations with a specialised team, the man was arrested in the house, police said. The suspect had injured himself and was taken to hospital, said Bernhard Graser, a police spokesman.

Graser told the Zofinger Tagblatt newspaper that the attacker’s injuries were self-inflicted.

Police have called for witnesses to share video or photos that may be useful for their investigation.

Images shown by Aargauer Zeitung showed a large deployment of police and emergency vehicles. The security forces had assault rifles and bullet-proof vests.

A police helicopter landed on a nearby sports field, causing the local youth football team to cut short a training session, the newspaper said.