CLAYTON • A jury on Wednesday found Christopher Colletta guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action for stabbing his wife to death in 2010.
Mary Colletta, 30, was fatally stabbed on the top deck of the garage at St. John's Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur, now known as Mercy Hospital St. Louis, on Aug. 3, 2010.
The St. Louis County Circuit Court jury could have returned a verdict on a second-degree murder charge, which would have allowed Colletta a shorter prison term and the possibility of parole. But the panel, after deliberating for less than two hours, convicted him on the more serious charge that the crime was premeditated, which will send Colletta to prison for life. Formal sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 1.
After hearing the verdict, the victim's parents, Mike and Sylvia Daniels, held each other in the hallway outside the courtroom and cried. Sylvia Daniels clutched her daughter's photograph.
"We're going to mourn her forever," she said, "but knowing we do not have to worry about him is going to help."
Colletta said on the witness stand he "snapped" during an argument last year with his wife and stabbed her 18 times after handing her divorce papers. But he also said he then "blanked out" and couldn't remember actually killing her.
"When I came to, I was standing over her," Colletta, 40, testified. "And she was still holding the divorce papers in her hand. And that's when I freaked out. I panicked. I wished I would have stayed. I panicked and ran."
Defense attorneys Robert and Jolene Taaffe asked the jury to consider whether Colletta's actions reflected the cool and deliberate elements needed for a first-degree murder conviction.
"If he so desperately wanted to get back with her, why would he sit around and deliberately plan her murder?" Jolene Taaffe said during closing arguments.
Taaffe said after the jury reached its verdict that she had tried to show Colletta "didn't reflect upon what he was doing and that he snapped in a rage and killed the woman he loved."
But Prosecutor Stephen O'Brien said nearly everything about the case - the number of stab wounds, Colletta bringing the knife to the garage, and his previous statements to friends that he wanted to kill her - proved deliberation. "Why did he kill her?" O'Brien asked. "He couldn't live without her."
Colletta's mother and aunts said after the verdict that the whole case was a "terrible tragedy."
"We suffer the loss of both of them," said one of Colletta's aunts, Toni Luttrell. "We will be praying for her family and her children as well." Both Colleta and his wife had children but not together.
Colletta admitted that he waited at the garage for his wife for more than an hour before she got off work as a CT scan technologist. He said he wanted to give her the divorce papers and some clothes that she had asked him to return.
A large knife happened to be in the bag with the clothes and divorce papers, he testified. He said he had put it there a few days before because she had told him her boyfriend had a gun and he wanted a weapon for protection in case of trouble.
Surveillance video does not show the killing but it does show Christopher Colletta waiting. He used 62 seconds to leave his vehicle, stab her, return and drive away, according to testimony.
Colletta testified that the two argued about various family members, and that he "snapped" after she said that she had sex with a boyfriend in her car and the Colletta house and that she "loved it."
On cross-examination, O'Brien questioned whether it was possible in that time frame for Colletta to walk 75 feet to his wife's car, have such an involved argument her, stab her 18 times, and then walk back to his own car.
The defendant said that after the murder he was "devastated" and thought about killing himself. He drove away from the scene, tossing the knife out of the car along Interstate 270. Relatives found him that evening at a yacht club his uncle managed in St. Charles, and turned him in to police.
Detectives quickly learned that the couple had separated and that Mary Colletta, whom her family prefers to call Mary Daniels, had obtained a restraining order against him the month before.
Christopher Colletta described the last few months of the relationship as volatile, saying that the couple argued, would get back together, and argue again. He testified that he didn't want to get a divorce.
"You wanted her back, didn't you?" O'Brien asked during cross-examination.
"Absolutely. I love her," Colletta replied.
"You love her?" O'Brien questioned.
"Absolutely," Colletta responded. "With all my heart."
Patrick M. O'Connell of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
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