A former corrections officer will spend the rest of his life in prison after killing his ex-wife with an axe.
Mark Owens, 57, received a mandatory life sentence after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, PEOPLE confirms. He confessed to killing his 48-year-old wife, Kim Penney, as she headed to work on the morning of Sept. 27, 2017.
Penney’s mother, Peggy Browning, addressed the court on Monday.
Browning said that Owens was a coward and she hoped he would burn in hell.
“I hope he rots there,” Browning said. “You don’t even want to know what I hope happens to him in jail. I hope that every day he’s miserable and has to watch over his shoulders.”
“Kim was an awesome person, so strong, loving, giving and faithful,” her sister, Penney said. “You don’t deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us, and in fact you will not because you will spend the rest of your life locked up like an animal, under the control of someone else.”
According to theNew Orleans Advocate, Penney’s family had long suspected that Owens was capable of murder. In 2015, he allegedly forced her into a home and threatened to harm himself with a weapon. After his arrest, he was placed into a pretrial diversion program instead of jail.
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Mark Owens.St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s Office
TheAdvocatereports that Owens, who once worked as a jail guard, had a history of mental illness and had been “confined to mental hospitals” multiple times.
St. Bernard Parish Sheriff James Pohlmanntells NOLA.comthat Mark Owens was “a person with a lot of troubles,” and that deputies responded to multiple domestic disturbances involving him in the years before Penney’s murder.
Owens admitted that he had been distressed over his suspicion that Penney had an affair. He said he was consumed with thoughts of killing them, theAdvocatereports.
After the guilty plea, the St. Bernard District Attorney Perry Nicosia released a statement praising the outcome. “I am pleased with the conviction and life sentence,” Nicosia said. “It allows the family to move forward without having to relive this horrible crime at trial.”
PEOPLE confirms that Owens will serve his sentence at the Wade Correction Center in northern Louisiana — a facility that houses a special unit for former law enforcement officers.
source: people.com
