LIMA, Peru – A Peruvian court has sentenced to 35 years in prison a U.S. man who pleaded guilty to killing his Peruvian wife and dumping her body at sea in a suitcase.
William Trickett Smith II of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was also ordered Monday to pay $21,000 in restitution to the family of Claudia Gomez.
He has admitted killing Gomez in 2007 at a Lima hotel and hiring a boat to haul her body into the Pacific. The suitcase later washed up on Lima's coast.
The couple had met over the Internet in 2006 when she was 21 and he 26. They married the following year.
Gomez's parents last saw her when she said she was going to Lima in July 2007 to meet up with Smith. They say she had her passport and hoped to move to Pennsylvania.
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