A 75-year-old woman from Wyoming was sentenced to life in prison for killing her husband with a rifle in the mid-1970's and throwing his body down the shaft of an abandoned gold mine, The Associated Press reported Monday.
Alice Uden sat quietly in a wheelchair before speaking at the hearing. She sobbed when speaking about the death of her third husband, Ronald Holtz, then 25.
"I've tried to atone for it," Uden said, according to the AP. "I wish that I never would have met him so that none of this ever would have happened. He was a very frightening man."
The court did not believe Uden's argument that she shot Holtz in the head to defend her toddler daughter from him. She was found guilty of second-degree murder in May.
Uden killed Holtz in late 1974 or 1975 in Cheyenne, where he was living with her and a small child. Uden testified that she shot him with a rifle after he became enraged over the girl's crying and was inches away from attacking her in bed.
Laramie County District Court Judge Steven Sharpe said he considered possible factors, like Uden's lack of prior criminal history.
District Attorney Scott Homar said the killing was a thoughtful, deliberate act that got rid of Holtz.
"Her way out was to take Mr. Holtz's life while he was sleeping and then dispose of it in a way that it wouldn't be found for 39 1/2 years," Homar said.
Police arrested Uden and her fourth and current husband, Gerald Uden, 72, both of Chadwick, Mo., last fall and accused them of killing former spouses in different attacks.
Gerald Uden has pleaded guilty to killing his ex-wife and her two sons in central Wyoming in 1980. Prosecutors have not drawn any link between the two cases.
Alice Uden testified at her trial that she removed Christmas decorations from a large cardboard barrel and put Holtz's body inside. After previous attempts to find Holtz's remains inside a mine filled with dead cattle and other ranch animals, investigators dug deeper into the shaft last summer and found Holtz's remains.
