NORWICH – Peter Wlasiuk will make one last appearance at the Chenango County Courthouse Friday, where he will be sentenced once again for the killing of his wife, Patricia, nearly four months after a guilty verdict was handed down by a jury of his peers after his third trial for the crime.

On July 3, following two and a half days and more than ten hours of deliberations, jurors returned with their verdict. Wlasiuk, charged with second degree murder – a class A-1 felony – in his wife’s death, has twice been convicted to – and twice successfully appealed – a 25 years to life sentence in state prison.

Wlasiuk has maintained his innocence over the past decade, claiming he and his wife were traveling east on County Road 35 in the Town of Guilford on or about April 3, 2002, when Patricia – driving the couple’s 1998 GMC pick-up truck – swerved to miss a deer in the roadway, careening into Guilford Lake. Patricia’s body was later recovered by emergency personnel and all efforts to resuscitate her met with failure.

According to the Chenango County District Attorney’s Office, the accident was staged, and it’s believed Wlasiuk smothered his wife at their Oxford home on New Virginia Road, loaded her body into the bed of the truck and then pushed or drove the vehicle into the lake himself. Several days after his original arrest, Wlasiuk changed his story, claiming he and his wife had been arguing when she purposefully drove the truck through a 32-foot gap in a guardrail located on the south shore of the lake.

According to forensic expert Dr. James Terzian, whose testimony was reviewed by jurors shortly before Wlasiuk’s most recent guilty verdict was announced, there was no evidence of such an accident.