WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- A teacher convicted of killing her lover's wife in a so-called 'Fatal Attraction' case was sentenced Friday to the maximum penalty, 25 years to life in prison.
Carolyn Warmus killed Betty Jean Solomon in 1989 and had sex with the victim's husband in a car later that same evening, according to testimony at the highly publicized trial.
Warmus was convicted May 27 of second-degree murder and illegal gun possession. On Friday in Westchester County Court, Judge John Carey sentenced the 28-year-old Michigan heiress to 25 years to life, the maximum penalty, for the murder charge. He also gave Warmus to 5 to 15 years to life on the weapons conviction, to be served concurrently with the murder sentence.
Warmus's attorney, William Aronwald, said he would appeal the sentence.
A seven-man, five-woman jury deliberated seven days last month before finding Warmus guilty of slaying Betty Jean Solomon, 40. It was the second trial for Warmus. The first ended in a hung jury.
Solomon was shot nine times on Jan. 15, 1989, and bled to death on her living room floor in the Greenburgh, N.Y., apartment where she lived with her husband, Paul, and only deughter.
Prosecutors said Warmus became enraged when Paul Solomon, 44, a fellow teacher at the Greenville Elementary School, broke off their affair in 1988.
They said that after Warmus killed Mrs. Solomon, she met the victim's husband in nearby Yonkers for dinner at a restaurant and then had sex with him in her parked car.
The case got the 'Fatal Attraction' tag because of its resemblance to the 1987 movie that depicted the fury of a spurned other woman toward her married lover.
In the first trial, the defense claimed that Paul Solomon and a private investigator involved in the case should have been tried instead of Warmus. During the second trial, the defense pressed its contention that Solomon was trying to frame Warmus.
In the second trial, the prosecution produced a glove it said was found next to the victim's body with microscopic bloodstains on it. The glove had been missing for three years and was found by Solomon in his home.
The defense, however, claimed that Solomon placed the blood stain on the glove to frame Warmus.
