A Dover medical doctor who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for killing his wife inside their home in 2020 was sentenced to prison on Friday.
Ingolf Tuerk was sentenced in Norfolk Superior Court to 12 to 16 years in prison on May 16 by Judge Mark A. Hallal.
Tuerk faced a first-degree murder charge for killing his wife, Kathleen McLean, in May 2020.
He admitted to doing so when he took the stand in his own defense and during a police interview the day after her death. Tuerk argued that he did not intend to kill McLean, and had been drunk fighting with her when he strangled her to death.
He then put her body in a nearby pond with a pair of rocks in her pants to weigh her down.
The 12-person jury in Tuerk’s case returned its verdict in about 24 hours. Voluntary manslaughter is a lesser included offense of first-degree murder.
During his closing argument, Tuerk’s lawyers tried paint McLean as manipulative, as the couple was headed for divorce but had agreed to reconcile. The defense claimed McLean only agreed as a ploy to own Tuerk’s home and money.
But Elizabeth McLaughlin, an assistant district attorney for the Norfolk County District Attorney’s office, revealed further about the pair’s relationship.
She noted that McLean obtained a restraining order against Tuerk in February 2020, not long after the couple married in Las Vegas the previous December.
When Tuerk reached out to see if she would consider reconciliation, McLean was unsure, but wanted to make it work — she wanted stability for her three children.
By May, the hope for reconciliation had ended when Tuerk killed McLean, a killing prosecutors said was “motivated by greed.”
After signing a post-nuptial agreement and adding McLean’s name to the deed of his home, Tuerk became angry — he “wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to get his house,” McLaughlin said.
