Illinois man gets life in Wisconsin hatchet slaying of wife

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RACINE, Wis. (AP) — A Chicago-area man was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for killing his estranged wife with a hatchet after she tried to hide from him in Wisconsin.

Racine County Circuit Judge Eugene Gasiorkiewicz sentenced Cristian Loga-Negru, 40, of Arlington Heights, Ill., about three months after rejecting Loga-Negru’s argument that he was mentally ill when he killed his wife, The Journal Times of Racine reported. Loga-Negru will be eligible for parole in 30 years.

Loga-Negru, a Romanian immigrant and businessman, pleaded no contest in May to first-degree intentional homicide in the 2014 slaying of his 36-year-old wife, Roxana Abrudan. She had tried to hide from him by staying with her boss in Wisconsin. Prosecutors said Loga-Negru spent a month searching for his wife, planning the attack and hunting her down.

In July, Gasiorkiewicz rejected Loga-Negru’s contention that he was insane when he killed his wife. After a two-day trial, the judge found that Loga-Negru was likely “full of rage and emotional turmoil” but that did not qualify as a mental disease or defect.

“You asked for hope. Your father asked for humanity. What hope does Roxana have?” Gasiorkiewicz asked Loga-Negru at sentencing.

Abrudan had been staying in Mount Pleasant at the home of Michael Enz and his wife. According to the complaint, Loga-Negru tracked her down, hit her in the head several times with a hatchet outside the home, loaded her into a rental car and drove to a motel where police arrested him. Abrudan was airlifted to a suburban Milwaukee hospital where she died.

Enz told the court he hopes Loga-Negru “thinks every day of his life about what he did and what he took away from this woman.”

Loga-Negru apologized in court. He said he has been painted as a villain but added, “A villain cannot cry every night.”