Court sentences two-time wife killer to jail

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC):

A man who killed his second common-law wife, seven months after he had been released from prison for killing the first, has been sentenced to 26 years in jail with the judge ordering that he be put on probation for two years after his release.

Justice Devan Rampersad imposed the sentence on 62 year-old Winston Joseph, who however will serve a term of five months and 27 days.

Joseph plead guilty to manslaughter based on an unlawful act after he entered a plea agreement with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in March after he had been charged with the murder of Ann-Marie Mark on October 4, 2003, at her home in Diego Martin, west of here.

In 1994, Joseph was convicted of manslaughter for killing his then-common-law wife, Pansy Wiltshire, who was five months pregnant, in Maloney Gardens, along the east west corridor.

Justice Harold Koylass had sentenced him to five years, but he only served three years and eight months, with prison authorities applying remission to his sentence.

Joseph was not arrested for Mark’s murder until July 2007, when her daughter spotted him at a construction site in the capital.

Mark’s two children provided eyewitness evidence in the prosecution’s case against Joseph.

Her daughter heard the couple arguing that morning and heard her mother saying, “Not because you stab me up the first time, you feel you could come and do it again.”

In the first killing, Joseph told police he strangled Wiltshire after she and her young son said her ex-partner had visited her.

In a plea in mitigation, Joseph’s attorney, public defender Michelle Ali, said he regretted his actions and admitted anger management was a struggle for him when he was younger.

Ali also said he wanted an opportunity to care for his elderly father on his release.