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Husband Gets Life in Prison: He Killed Wife in Shelby Township

Posted on: Wednesday, 1 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By John Masson, Detroit Free Press

Mar. 1--Protesting to the end that he didn't kill his wife, convicted murderer Anthony Deleon was sentenced Tuesday to spend the rest of his life in prison.

"As God is my witness," Deleon told Judge Richard Caretti in Macomb County Circuit Court, "I am innocent."

A jury thought otherwise and convicted him in January of first-degree murder for shooting 34-year-old Karen Deleon to death in 1998 in their Shelby Township mobile home, then making the death look like a suicide. The case was revived after a lapse of more than seven years because a cold-case team reexamined the evidence and found enough to charge Deleon, now 44.

Caretti sentenced Deleon to life in prison without hope of parole, as the law requires. He also ordered Deleon to pay more than $8,000 in restitution -- the cost of Karen Deleon's funeral.

Deleon had argued that his wife was addicted to prescription pain medication and killed herself, while prosecutors argued that Deleon shot her when it became clear she was leaving an abusive marriage.

Karen Deleon's loved ones made statements to the court Tuesday.

"You took my mother away from me when I was 14 years old," said her son Ron Woolsey, now 22. "I can never forgive you for that."

Her father, Richard Alseth, thanked police and prosecutors and said the conviction affirmed his faith in the criminal justice system.

"I will not stand here and trash and humiliate you for murdering our daughter," Alseth said, adding that to do so would not have been fair to Deleon's father, who sat quietly in the courtroom during the trial.

After the hearing, Alseth said the verdict and sentence confirmed what Karen Deleon's family had known "from day one."

Alseth also said he wasn't surprised Deleon continued to proclaim his innocence and plans to appeal his conviction.

"That's just the kind of individual he is," Alseth said. "The appeal doesn't bother me, but I wish it was completely over."

But in the courtroom, he told Deleon that the ultimate judgment comes from God.

"I don't know how He can," Alseth said, "but I hope He has mercy on your soul."

Contact JOHN MASSON at 586-469-4904 or masson@freepress.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Detroit Free Press

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Source: Detroit Free Press

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