Husband Who Pushed Wife Off Cliff On Anniversary Sentenced To Life

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A husband lured his wife to the Rocky Mountain National Park on their 12th wedding anniversary and pushed her over a 130ft cliff after taking one last photo.

Harold Henthorn from Denver, Colorado has been convicted of first-degree murder of his second wife by a federal jury and been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

He is now suspected of the death of his first wife who also died in tragic circumstances.

The Daily Mail reports:

Harold Henthorn, 59, who was found guilty of murdering second wife Toni Henthorn in September, was given the mandatory sentence by U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson on Tuesday.

Dr Henthorn, who was 50, plummeted 130 feet to her death in a remote, rocky area of the park in September 2012. Harold Henthorn had taken her there to celebrate their 12th wedding anniversary.

Prosecutors say he wanted to collect $4.7million in life insurance policies she didn’t know existed.

Henthorn, who has a ten-year-old daughter with his late wife, has always maintained her death was an accident.

Authorities continue to investigate the death of Henthorn’s first wife, Lynn, who was crushed when a car slipped off a jack when they were changing a flat tire in 1995. He hasn’t been charged in that death.anniversary

During the sentencing he took his chance to speak and maintained his innocence.

According to CBS4 Local, he said: ‘I did not kill Toni or anyone.’

He told authorities that he surprised his wife with the hike up Deer Mountain, and that she died falling over a ledge after stopping to take a picture of the view.

In the 911 calls released in October, Henthorn asks for a helicopter to be sent up to rescue his wife, and even offers to pay for it, but the dispatcher says it’s too dangerous and that the search and rescue teams will have to climb the mountain on foot.

Henthorn told them: ‘It is going to take at least an hour to come up that trail. I will pay any and all expenses for a helicopter. … if you drop a paramedic down here.’

During the trial some jurors said he sounded too cool for a man trying to save his wife’s life.

While the content of Henthorn’s speech sounds caring, it is the clear and almost slow tone of his voice that had some jurors suspicious.anniversary

‘The 911 call… there was so much inconsistency on the call,’ juror Jerry Taboada told CBS Denver.

‘It didn’t add up, it was cold and it was calculated, there was no feeling behind those calls at all. He wanted her to die.’

In the almost 20 minutes of audio, emergency dispatchers routinely check in on the man who relays his wife’s deteriorating condition.

Paramedics helped coach Henthorn through the process of administering CPR to his wife, but jurors say it didn’t really sound like he was trying.

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Among the other pieces of evidence released were pictures taken on that hike.

In the photos, the Henthorns look like any other happy couple. But there’s a detail in one of the photos that helped push jurors to issue a conviction.

That photo involves Toni Henthorn admiring the view with a pair of binoculars that were never found at the scene.

Also unsettling was the fact that Henthorn’s first wife, Lynn, died in 1995.anniversary

Lynn Henthorn was killed while changing a tire on their SUV and the car suddenly fell on her.

Prosecutors in the latest case claim that this was no accident and that Henthorn purposefully kicked the vehicle to dislodge the jacks, causing the SUV to crush Lynn.

While the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office ruled the death an accident at the time, it has since reopened the investigation in light of the death of Henthorn’s second wife.

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