Man sentenced to 33 years in prison for killing wife

In a shocking bit of news, a USA resident, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison for killing his second wife after the mysterious death of his first wife. Diana, 38, was married to Rexford Lynn Keel, who was known by his middle name. A decade earlier, Keel had been married to Elizabeth Edwards. On 1 January 2006, 42-year-old Elizabeth died after falling down a set of outdoor concrete steps at their home near Momeyer in North Carolina. Elizabeth hit her head and the cause of death was recorded as blunt force trauma. It was a terrible tragedy.Less than a year later, it seemed Keel had been given a second chance at love when he met Diana, who was 20 years younger than him. Keel would travel to Latin America for his work in real estate. Diana was from Bogotá, and worked as a nurse in the emergency department at the Wilson Medical Center. With her compassionate personality, she was a natural with her patients.By 2019, her daughter, Laura, was 18 and at college and Diana, a regular churchgoer, seemed to have a lot on her mind, according to her friends.

On 9 March, Diana’s daughter reported her missing. And one of her workmates called police a day or so later, to say Diana hadn’t shown up for work. “She was supposed to work tonight,” the colleague said. “She’s on the schedule. She’s that type of coworker, she’s always like, 30 minutes early. And if you text her, she replies back.” She had not done any of these things. A delivery driver had delivered a package to Diana on the morning of 8 March, but that was the last time she had been seen. Police started a missing person investigation and straight away Diana’s friends and family suspected that Keel knew more than he was letting on. Diana’s mother, Esperanza Prada, claimed her daughter’s marriage was unhappy and Diana wanted to leave. But Keel had threatened her.The day before she vanished, Diana had messaged Esperanza in Colombia, “Mum, I love you very much. ”Esperanza said the message had come out of the blue and left her feeling uneasy. Had the missing woman decided to walk out of her marriage? If so, why hadn’t she taken her 10-year-old son with her? But the biggest question of all was, why hadn’t her husband reported his wife missing? When questioned, Keel, 57, said his wife had gone out to run some errands and hadn’t returned. He said she would leave “from time to time” and wouldn’t return for “several days”. It was a statement that didn’t ring true. Diana was a devoted mother who was in touch with her family every day. She regularly checked her social media, but now her messages remained unread and FaceTime calls to her went unanswered. Her car was still parked outside the house, her mobile hadn’t been used and neither had any of her bank cards.

On 12 March, a department of transport worker made a call to police from a rural road in Edgecombe County, about 30 miles from Diana’s home. “It looked like something is lying in the woods,” the caller said. “I don’t know what it is. A body, a something… don’t know. ”He said Diana had been beaten to death in her bedroom. Keel bought cleaning supplies from the local Walmart store and cleaned the room. He rolled Diana in a tarpaulin. Experts believe she was still alive when she was loaded into her own SUV, driven into the woods and left to rot. The defending attorney asked the judge to take into account that Keel was experiencing health problems, including kidney failure. But at sentencing, Diana’s mother reminded the court of the reason her daughter was no longer alive. She said she wanted to tell women that if their partner was abusive, they needed to run. “Don’t stay there,” she begged, as she asked the judge for a severe sentence. “I want you to have the same compassion for Keel that he had when he killed her. ”The judge sentenced Keel to a minimum of 33 years in prison. Diana’s son remains with family.