A St Louis County jury found a Missouri man guilty of murdering his pregnant wife after the court heard he made a pros and cons list about leaving her prior to the killing in 2019.
After three days of testimony, the jury determined that Beau Rothwell, 31, had deliberated before the brutal murder of his 28-year-old wife, Jennifer Rothwell, and had not, as his defence attorneys had argued, killed her in a “red haze” rage.
In addition to first-degree murder, Rothwell was charged with abandonment of a corpse and tempering with physical evidence. Jennifer’s body was found badly beaten about a week after she was reported missing.
During the trial’s proceedings, the jury heard testimony from Rothwell himself, who described having an argument with his wife, who was six weeks pregnant at the time, about an extramarital affair.
He told the courtroom that he’d struck Jennifer from behind with a mallet in a fit of rage, and then continued to follow her staggering body to the garage where he delivered a second, and what the coroner later determined was fatal, blow to the head.
“In the heat of everything, I hit her again,” Rothwell said, according to the St Louis Post-Dispatch. “I believe I cracked her skull, she fell unconscious and fell down the stairs.”
In November 2019, police received a call from Rothwell at approximately 9.44pm on 12 November to report his wife missing and told officers that the last time he’d seen her was at 6.20am that morning.
Her car, however, had been found by officers nearly 12 hours before he’d made the call to report her missing.
Soon after, Rothwell led authorities to where he’d dumped her battered body, which was found in a wooded area located about an hour away from the couple’s home. There, they found the 28-year-old, naked, with a plastic bag bound around her head with duct tape with a scattering of brush placed over her body.
Rothwell, who admitted to killing his wife during the trial, and his defence team were attempting to paint the deadly fall argument as an act of passion and sought to have his conviction dropped to the lesser charge of manslaughter, as they denied there was any premeditation involved.
He told the jury during his testimony last week that he allegedly went into “panic mode” when he began a diligent process of attempting to clean up the mess from the crime scene.
Police had reportedly found multiple bottles of bleach inside the home, alongside a carpet soaked with blood, which investigators later confirmed through DNA testing was his dead wife’s.
Rothwell also told the jury how he’d driven and abandoned his wife’s car along a route that would make it appear as though she’d had car difficulties on her way to work and had even sent staged texts to her phone throughout the day, hours after he’d killed and discarded her body, to make it appear that he was worried about her wellbeing.
“It was this feeling of needing to keep up the facade,” he told the courtroom, according to the St Louis Post-Dispatch.
For their part, the prosecution worked throughout the trial to convey how meticulous Rothwell was, frequently depicting him as an intense planner.
Text and Facebook messages, entered as evidence by the prosecution, show the 31-year-old man exchanging sexually explicit notes with the woman he was engaged in an affair with, including a pros and cons list where the man laid out all the reasons for leaving his then wife.
In his closing arguments, assistant prosecutor Tom Smith argued that Rothwell’s claims of attacking and murdering his wife in a rage was a lie, and that the prosecution team had laid out a pile of evidence that pointed to the contrary.
“He deliberated when he got the weapon,” said Mr Smith, after pointing out that the pathologist’s testimony in the trial had confirmed that it was indeed the second strike that delivered the fatal blow against his wife’s head. “He deliberated when he drew it back. He deliberated when he brought it down on her head. It was all part of his plan.”
Before Jennifer Rothwell was reported missing, police discovered that she’d been looking up “what to do if your husband is upset you are pregnant” on her cell phone.
On 11 November 2019, the day of the fatal argument, Rothwell had told the court that it had all arisen after his wife had confronted him about his affair with another woman, whose identity she had reportedly asked him to confirm. When he refused, he said, she became upset and reportedly told him that her own pregnancy was the result of an affair with another man.
A paternity test, according to the St Louis Post-Dispatch, later confirmed that the baby that Jennifer Rothwell had been carrying for six weeks was in fact her husband’s, despite what he had said she’d told him on the day of her murder.
Rothwell will be sentenced for his charges of first-degree murder on 8 July, where the 31-year-old could be sentenced to life without parole.
