A man has been sentenced to 17 years and six monthsin jail for fatally stabbing his wife's lover in a "crime of passion".
Marin Neacsu, 58, from Sunshine West, pleaded guilty to murdering Ionel Coca on February 23 last year after becoming jealous that Mr Coca and his wife of 35 years — the mother of his four daughters — had fallen in love.
Victoria's Supreme Court today heard that soon after arriving in Australia from Romania, Mr Coca moved into a bungalow at the rear of where Neacsu, who was also born in Romania, lived with his wife. He was meant to stay for a year before hopefully receiving permanent residencyin Australia.
Neacsu grew increasingly suspicious of the relationship between Mr Coca and his wife before Christmas in 2010, sohe asked him to leave. Advertisement
About two months later – and one weekbefore the murder – Neacsu's wife Dida also moved out, Justice Betty King said.
"Your wife told you and the family that she was residing with an old woman from her church. She was not saying where the location was or who the old woman was," the judge said.
"Your wife returned each day to the family home and performed duties around the house but she was also during that time slowly moving her possessions out. You wished your wife to return to the family home and you spoketo her about that matter constantly. She indicated she was not prepared to return home. At no stage did she tell you that she had leftyou and the family home to live with the deceased man."
Following an argument with his wife on the evening of February 23, whenNeacsu again asked her to move home and she declined, he armed himself with a blue handled fishing knife and demanded his wife take him to where she was living.
"You pulled her by the hair and her hand was cut by the knife and you threatened to kill her if she didn't drive you to where she was now living," Justice King said.
"It is clear that your wife was in fear of her life ... Your wife tried to avoid driving you to wherethe deceased was living with her and initially drove you tothe street where your daughter Alis resided in Ardeer. You did not accept that that was where she was residing andyou again threatened her with violence if she did not take you to where she was actually living. She subsequently drove to the flats in Ridley Street and you forced her to direct you to the flat in which she was living."
As Mr Coca unlocked the front door, Dida Neacsu warned him that her estranged husband was armed with a knife, before she ran and hid in some nearby bushes.
Neacsu then stabbedMr Coca multiple times in the flat's doorway.
"It is my view that you were deeply suspicious of your wife being involved with the deceased," Justice King said.
"What occurred on this night was a decision relating to confirming your suspicions and confronting the deceased if your suspicions proved correct."
The judge added there was no evidence to suggest the deceased man was the initial aggressor as Neacsu had suggested.
"The evidence is clear that when he answered the door he was unarmed, theonly evidence is that you were at the doorwith a knife, that you had forced your estranged wife to take you there, that as the deceased fled from you down the stairs you chased him and yelled out 'he stole my wife, hestole my wife'," Justice King said.
"There is no doubt that the deceased tried to protect himself from your stabbing actions. He was not successful, as is apparent from the large volume of blood located in the flat, on the front door, around the flatlanding outside and particularly in the area outside flat 6 where you caught up with the deceased man after he had fled. The deceased man was losing large amountsof blood as he fled from you ... You stabbed him 16 times."
The judge described the attack as "viciousand clearly quite frenzied".
Neacsu told a forensic psychiatrist, Dr Lester Walton: "I saw the man, I had aheart attack straight away. I was not in this world."
Dr Walton told the court that Neacsu was likely to have been suffering from a diagnosable depressive disorder and he described what Neacsu did as"a crime of passion".
"That he had been cuckolded was finally, definitively confirmed to him and he was further inflamed by what heperceived to be the aggressivity exhibited by the deceased. Depressiveillnesses certainly can erode a person's capacity for exercising proper social judgment and such a disorder may also disinhibit aggressive urges, more commonly towards oneself than others," Dr Walton's report says.
In sentencing, Justice King said she took into account Neacsu's mental illness, early guilty plea, remorse, limited prior convictions, prospects of rehabilitation and family support, together with just punishment, denunciation, and the need for general and specific deterrence.
"Our community, parliament and the courts have repeatedly said that women are not chattels, they are notsomething that is owned by any man," she told him.
"Your wife was entitled to leave you. You may not have liked that, but she had the right to do so. She did not have to tell you where she was going, or if she was pursing a relationship with another man. You had no right to know this, you had no right to control what she did and, equally, you had no right to kill the man with whom she had formed a relationship becauseof your anger at being, as it was described, 'cuckolded'.
"Our society has moved forward and does not excuse any person on the basis of the crime being a 'crime of passion'."
Justice King ordered Neacsu to serve a minimum of 14 yearsand six months in jail. He has already served 559 days in detention.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/cuckolded-man-jailed-for-killing-wifes-lover-20120904-25bx0.html
There was a friend ofmine on murder
And the judge's gavelfell
Jury found him guilty
Gave him sixteen years in hell.
He said he'd seen his lady being fooled with
By another man
She was down and he was up
He had a gun in his hand
Bullets started flying everywhere
And people started to scream
Big man lying on the ground
With a hole in his body
Where his life had been.
AC/DC "'74 Jailbreak " Lyrics

awful

someone who doesnt want you isnt worth losing your life or your freedom over,,,,just move on,,,,