wife caught trying kill children

What would you do if you came home to your wife attempting to kill your children???

A New Hampshire man was sentenced Friday to 15 to 30 years in prison for beating his mentally ill wife to death with a flashlight after he came home to find she had strangled their 4-year-old son with a ribbon and tried to kill their 7-year-old daughter. Christopher Smeltzer, 39, pleaded guilty to killing Mara Pappalardo, who was hospitalized several times for mental illness. Prosecutors say she was paranoid, obsessed with death and convinced her husband and mother-in-law were plotting to take her children away.

Smeltzer initially was charged with second-degree manslaughter. Prosecutors at his plea hearing in October changed the charge to manslaughter by provocation in deference to the horrific scene that triggered his actions.

The 90-minute sentencing took place in a Rockingham Superior courtroom. There was tension between members of Smeltzer’s family and his wife’s. And at one point, a member of her family shouted to Smeltzer that God will be the judge of his actions. Senior Assistant Attorney General Jane Young said what happened at the Smeltzer home Nov. 7, 2010 “was simply a tragedy.” The voices of the two survivors of that tragedy — Smeltzer and his daughter — were heard publicly for the first time during Friday’s sentencing. A tape recording of Mercey reading a letter to the judge was played by her lawyer; the girl did not attend the hearing.

Mercey’s young voice hushed the courtroom. “I am mad and sad that my Daddy killed my Mommy and brother Mason,” she says on the tape. The girl, who lives with one of her mother’s sisters, ends by saying, “Please keep him in jail for the rest of his life.”

Young said Mercey’s statement contradicts what she said in the days after the attacks and to her counselor. Smeltzer said he wished he had a “rewind button” to go back and change what he did, including leaving his delusional wife to do cocaine and smoke crack with his friends. He came home, prosecutors say, to find his son strangled, his daughter dangling off the bed with a scarf wound around her neck and his wife in the throes of a suicide attempt.

“As soon as I saw my son I knew something was very wrong,” Smeltzer said, choking with emotion. “I knew he was dead and I lost all control. Enraged, I struck my wife. I did something that was not going to bring my son back.”

Smeltzer believed his daughter was dead as well. Prosecutors say toxicology tests confirm he took a large quantity of pills in an effort to take his own life. They say Mercey awakened him the next morning and asked if her mother and brother were breathing, and asked her father to make her some tea. Defense attorney John Newman asked the judge to impose a 7 1/2 to 10 year sentence, saying he could think of no greater provocation to manslaughter than Smeltzer picking up his dead son, putting his mouth to his son’s mouth only to find it ice cold.