Clarence Kelsey pleaded guilty earlier this year, testifying that in June 2009 he returned home from a bar and stabbed his wife with a large kitchen knife.
Clarence Kelsey admitted he killed his wife during an argument in July 2009.
TRENTON – A city man was sentenced to 15 years in prison today for stabbing and killing his wife inside their home on South Clinton Avenue in 2009.
Clarence Kelsey, 69, pleaded guilty earlier this year, saying on that on June 29, 2009, he returned to his home after spending some time at a neighborhood bar and stabbed his wife, Colleen Kelsey, with a large kitchen knife.
Kelsey was sentenced under a plea deal he made with the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office. He will have to serve 85 percent of his sentence, or 12 years and 9 months, before he is eligible for parole.
When he came home that evening from the bar, Kelsey found his wife holding a knife that he said he believed she was going to use to hurt herself, he testified. Kelsey said the two had gotten into an argument earlier in the day.
Kelsey went to the kitchen and grabbed an even bigger knife than the one his wife had in an attempt to scare her, he said. They got into a scuffle and he forced her to the ground, tripped, and fell on top of her, stabbing her in the chest with the knife, he said.
Kelsey said that, while he was drunk, he was aware of what he was doing and did not check his wife’s pulse or call for emergency help. Instead he took a shower and left for a week, he said.
More than two weeks later Kelsey reported his wife missing. Police had already found a badly decomposed body in the North Crosswicks Cemetery in Hamilton and became suspicious that the description of the missing person matched that of the body.
Police searched Kelsey’s apartment and found blood evidence. Several days later he was charged with murder.