A chemist who spent 10 years working for one of the United States' largest pharmaceutical companies received a life sentence on Monday, after a judge ruled that she was guilty of poisoning her late husband rather than let him divorce her.
42-year-old New Jersey resident Tianle Li was convicted of murder in July for the killing of computer software engineer Xiaoye Wang, who died in 2011. State Superior Court Judge Michael Toto ruled on Monday that Li had planned this murder in advanced.
"This was planned, calculated and committed in a cruel and depraved manner," Toto stated, according to TIME.
Li's attorney Steven Altman, who originally hoped for a 30-year sentence, maintained that the former Monroe resident did not have any involvement in the death of her husband. During her statement read in court Monday, Li struggled through tears to say that she prayed for her husband's soul, and intends to appeal the verdict.
Li spent a decade working for New York City-based biopharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb, which prosecutors used during their presentation of evidence to show that Li placed an order on thallium - an odorless poison - through a work account in 2010 after looking up the effects the tasteless poison had on humans.
In January 2011, 39-year-old Wang checked into Princeton Medical Center complaining of flu-like symptoms. He then fell into a coma and died on Jan. 26, TIME reported. Altman stressed that Li was next to Wang when he took his last breath, and even changed his bedpan until the very end.
But prosecutor Christie Bevacqua argued that Li was guilty, given a wealth of evidence including a notebook she used to log the effects of the poison.
"She was secretly keeping a journal of all his symptoms, wondering when he was going to die," Bevacqua stated. "She calculated every aspect of her husband's murder; not only how to do it, but how to get away with it. She thought she was going to get away with this murder. She chose to murder her husband rather than allow him to divorce her."
Li, who came to the United States from Beijing in the 1990s, met Wang while they were both enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. Reports from New Jersey police indicate that law enforcement officials went to Wang and Li's residence in Monroe a handful of times for domestic disturbances, TIME reported.
Wang and Li have one son - a 4-year-old boy who is currently being cared for by family members.
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