VIRGINIA BEACH – A 75-year-old local man was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years and 8 months for the second-degree murder of his wife.
Richard Wayne Woltz pleaded guilty to the charge in January of this year.
On Jan. 8, 2018, Woltz requested medical assistance using his 5Star Urgent Response medical alert device, according to the Virginia Beach Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office.
Virginia Beach EMS and Fire responded to his home and began to treat Woltz for a self-inflicted laceration to his throat. There, crews noticed a body on the floor covered with a towel and called police to the home.
Woltz told EMS crews, “She’s been dead a couple of days,” “I killed her,” and “She went crazy,” prosecutors said.
Woltz’s wife was also 75 years old and was watching television on the couch when he killed her. She had five stab wounds to the chest, two to the neck, and fifteen to the head.
She also had six blunt force injuries to her head, multiple contusions over the head and neck, and a laceration on her finger, prosecutors said.
Woltz told police he planned to kill his wife then himself. He said she would be “better off dead,” because she was
“basically losing her mind” and was “in great pain.”
Woltz placed the towel over her when she was dead, then tried to kill himself, but was still bleeding after a couple of days. He told police he activated his medical alert device to get help for himself because he “didn’t do a very good job of killing himself,” prosecutors said.
