By Ruben Castaneda
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 27, 2010; B01
For more than an hour, Spencer Ellsworth Chase listened as relatives and friends of the wife he'd murdered told a Prince George's County judge that he deserved no leniency, countering his defense attorney and supporters, who argued for mercy.
When it was his turn to speak, Chase, clad in an orange jail jumpsuit, stood and told Circuit Court Judge Beverly J. Woodard, "I did not kill my wife, your honor."
Chase, 50, then asked for mercy.
"I heard all the evidence in this case," Woodard said. "You killed your wife. There's no doubt in my mind you killed Antoinette Chase."
Woodard sentenced Chase to life in prison.
Relatives and friends of Antoinette Chase hugged Assistant State's Attorneys Ann Wagner-Stewart and Saman Danai as well as Benjamin Brown, the Prince George's homicide detective who tracked down key evidence.
Shortly after noon on May 20, 2008, Spencer Chase called 911 to report that he had found Antoinette Renee Chase, 46, facedown on the floor with an extension cord around her neck when he returned to their Upper Marlboro home after running errands, according to trial testimony. She was taken to Prince George's Hospital Center and pronounced dead.
Eight months earlier, in October 2007, county police had charged Spencer Chase with assaulting her. Those charges were dropped when she declined to proceed with the case.
In June, a Circuit Court jury convicted Chase of first-degree murder. An earlier trial ended in a mistrial when the jury failed to reach a verdict.
Antoinette's daughter, Monique Davis, 27, said she was pleased with her stepfather's sentence. "I'm very glad that it's come to an end," she said.
After her mother's slaying, Davis said, Chase called and asked her whether she had received any life insurance money but exhibited no grief.
Antoinette Chase worked as an analyst for the Department of Homeland Security and was the couple's primary wage earner, Davis said. Spencer Chase worked in a nursing home, she said.
Antoinette was in the process of splitting from her husband when she was killed, prosecutors said.
On the day his wife was killed, Chase told police that he had left the house about an hour earlier to run errands and left his wife's car running in the driveway with the garage door open.
Some of Antoinette's personal items -- her wedding ring, her cellphone and her BlackBerry -- were missing. Police obtained a warrant to have the victim's service provider "ping," or send signals to, her BlackBerry, according to trial testimony.
An initial search by police in the Glenn Dale area, about six miles away, was fruitless. However, Brown, the homicide detective, used his own hand-held GPS device to narrow the location of the signal and began opening storm drain covers, according to trial testimony and court records.
When Brown flipped open the third storm drain cover, he found the victim's cellphone, her BlackBerry, her wedding ring and her purse, containing her credit cards. Brown also found a plastic bag containing work gloves and rubber-soled water shoes.
The shoes were size 11 -- the same size Spencer Chase wears, according to trial testimony. Tests determined that the gloves contained DNA from both Antoinette and Spencer Chase.
No comments:
Post a Comment