EDWARDSVILLE, Ill., Jan. 26 (UPI) -- An Illinois woman has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for killing her husband by setting him on fire while he slept.
Tammy Englerth of Highland, who could have received a 60-year term if she had been convicted after a trial, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in November, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
At the sentencing hearing, Englerth's lawyer argued that her husband, Chris, had physically abused her. A doctor testified that he had found boot-shaped bruises on her body.
Madison County prosecutors said Englerth wanted to get rid of her husband to collect on his life insurance policy, to repay money she stole from the candy shop where she worked and to be with another man.
"You can't believe a thing that girl says," her father-in-law told the judge.
Englerth is already serving a 4-year sentence for the theft.
Investigators say Englerth, on the night of the fire, put her 8-year-old son in her car and then poured gasoline on her husband and lit it. Chris Englerth died six days later.
