Kent County, DE: Pardons board recommends commutation for killer

By ESTEBAN PARRA
The News Journal

The state Board of Pardons today said it recommended commuting the prison sentence of life without parole for a woman convicted in 1982 of feeding her estranged husband a Valium-laced macaroni salad before her accomplice stabbed him to death.

The recommendation to commute Judith Ann McBride’s sentence now goes to Gov. Jack Markell, who as a member of the board in 2006 supported her commutation. That recommendation was denied by then-Gov. Ruth Ann Minner.

“While we will certainly review the file carefully, the written decision by the board is thoughtful and the governor has supported a commutation for Ms. McBride in the past,” said Markell’s spokesman, Brian Selander.

McBride, 64, who has served 30 years for the first-degree murder of her estranged husband, William McBride, would have been eligible for parole if Minner went along with the recommendation in 2006. McBride remains in an Arizona prison, where she was transferred to in 2003.

In 1982, a Kent County Superior Court jury convicted McBride of conspiring with Florida drifter Frank L. Ross to murder her estranged husband. She contended she had suffered years of physical and emotional abuse from William McBride.

In her trial, one of the most sensational in Kent County history, McBride testified that she put Valium in her husband’s macaroni salad and had sex with him in an attempt to put him to sleep.

Later, when he fell into a drugged sleep, she let Ross into the apartment to carry out an apparent plan to drown her husband in the bathtub.

But Ross wound up stabbing William McBride 28 times in the head and body as the defenseless man tried to fend off the attacker. He was found dead, face down in his bathtub.

Ross was convicted in 1981 and is serving life without parole. His pleas to the Board of Pardons have been unsuccessful.

McBride has said in the past that the plan was for Ross to beat her husband in retaliation for abusing her and her children. She also has said she was sorry he was killed and that if she got out of prison, she would work to help others avoid her plight.

This is only the second time out of eight attempts that the Board of Pardons recommended commutation of McBride’s life sentence.