Wife killed husband with 14-inch decorative dagger during ‘roughhousing’ sex foreplay
Jennifer Lynn Via was jailed for 15 years on Monday for killing husband Thomas Via. She stabbed him through the heart during a sexually-charged argument at their home
A wife has admitted killing her husband with a 14-inch decorative dagger during ‘roughhousing’ foreplay that went wrong.
Jennifer Lynn Via, 49, was jailed for 15 years Monday after admitting the voluntary manslaughter of her husband Thomas Via, 47, at their home in Huntington, West Virginia, in November 2017.
She told Monday’s plea-hearing: ‘My husband and I liked to fight and have sex and then make up, if that’s the right way to say that.
‘He wasn’t supposed to get hurt, but it did happen.’
Her defense attorney Kerry Nessel said that the couple’s normal pattern of arguments followed by rough sex had gotten out of hand after both got drunk.
She said: ‘As strange as this is, they watched these Kung Fu movies and it led to, what I would tell a jury, foreplay, which was both of them getting pretty violent with each other while playing with weapons.
‘That’s what led to this.’
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The court was told how Via pushed the blade into Thomas’s back.
It sliced seven inches into his body, penetrated his heart, and caused him to bleed to death internally, the Herald-Dispatch reported.
Via dialed 911 afterwards, and told the operator she’d stabbed her husband during horse-play.
She was originally charged with first-degree murder, after detectives questioned the veracity of her story.
The killer offered various versions of what happened, including that her husband had slipped onto water before falling onto an old knife or screwdriver.
Her charge was dropped to voluntary manslaughter after the court agreed that Via had intended to use the knife, but not to cause any harm to her husband.
Via could now see her prison sentence dropped to as little as three years at a hearing scheduled for August 19, that will take into account her past personal and criminal history.