A husband is on trial for the murder of his estranged wife after her body was discovered in a parking garage next to a pile of bloodied divorce papers.
Christopher Colletta, 40, had told his friends that he could not cope with his wife Mary, divorcing him, the jury heard as the trial began in Clayton, Missouri yesterday.
He is charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action.
It is alleged that Colletta, of Hillsboro, sat in his car on August 3 last year waiting on his 30-year-old wife to finish work at St John's Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur.
CCTV shows Colletta sitting in his vehicle for an hour on the top floor of a parking garage at the hospital.
Prosecutor Stephen O'Brien said Colletta hid the murder weapon inside the divorce papers as he approached his wife before stabbing her 18 times in under a minute.
He then returned to his vehicle and drove away, it is alleged.
Defense lawyer Robert Taaffe did not dispute that his client was the killer, but asked jurors to consider whether Colletta's actions constituted a conviction for first-degree murder.
Mrs Colletta, whose family prefers to remember her by her maiden name Mary Daniels, worked as a CAT scan technologist at the hospital.
At the time of her violent death, the couple had been separated and she had obtained a restraining order against her husband in the previous month.
The divorce papers found next to the body were signed by Mary Colletta but not by Christopher Colletta.
Christopher and Mary
Mary
http://mydeathspace.com/article/2011/11/14/Christopher_Colletta_(40)_allegedly_stabbed_his_wi fe_18_times_and_left_a_pile_of_divorce_papers_next _to_her_body
Originally Posted by Gawna
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