A doctor from Dover, Massachusetts, accused of killing his wife five years ago was found guilty Thursday of voluntary manslaughter.
Ingolf Tuerk was also charged with first-degree murder in the 2020 death of Kathleen McLean, whom he is accused of strangling and dumping in a pond. But the jury found him guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter in the first degree instead.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 16.
“Essentially, he’s walking out scot-free,” said Richard McLean, Kathleen’s brother. “It’s a shame the whole thing took five years for us to get to this point, to walk away extremely disappointed.”
McLean’s family says that she is not getting justice, and that Tuerk got away with murder.
“Basically driving down the road and throwing a piece of trash out the window,” said Richard McLean. “That’s what he did to my sister. What person deserves that?”
Closing arguments had been presented Wednesday.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington argued in his closing that the killing was not premeditated, as prosecutors have said. He said the night was the culmination of McLean’s plan to gain control of Tuerk’s money and assets.
“This is all about money,” Reddington said. “And she played him pretty darn good.”
“I suggest to you that he reacted. He was drunk… He defended himself. And the beauty of the law is that the government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not act in self defense.”
“There’s no intent to kill,” Reddington added. “There’s an intent for self preservation.”
Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Lisa Beatty began her closing argument by describing the scene of McLean’s death and how Tuerk disposed of her body “like a piece of trash.”
She said Tuerk did not kill McLean in self defense or snap in the heat of the moment, as Reddington suggested. “I would suggest he was quite the opposite. He was cool, he was calm, he was collected.”
Beatty said Tuerk was worried about losing his money and his house, and did not want to get divorced again.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest it is not the heat of passion. It is not self defense. It is motive to kill.”
She noted that she would have been conscious, fighting him while he strangled her. And after the killing, he did not try to resuscitate her or call 911. Instead, prosecutors said, he weighed her down with rocks and left her body in a pond.
Prosecutors said the 63-year-old urologist admitted to police what he had done. On the stand Tuesday, he didn’t deny the charges, but said his actions were not premeditated.
The couple met on an online dating app and married in Las Vegas. Tuerk testified that he had been drinking and didn’t really remember their wedding at a drive-thru chapel.
“I don’t really remember. I only remember it was a woman — that’s the only thing I remember — that talked to us, and the next morning, I was told I was married,” he said.
They lived together in Dover with children from different marriages. Tuerk was forced to move out after McLean, 45, got a restraining order against him. They reconciled during the pandemic and he moved back into the home they shared.
They were drinking one night in the spring of 2020 and Tuerk said she hit him in the head with a glass. He said that’s when he strangled her.
“I kind of blacked out,” he said on the stand.
Originally from East Germany, Tuerk was arrested at a Dedham hotel and taken to a hospital, where police say he told them he put his wife’s body in a pond after the fight in their bedroom.
Tuerk recounted for the jury how his wife’s body floated to the surface.
“I walked through the yard and tried to look for something that may, you know, bring her down,” he testified.
The trial started on March 27 in Norfolk Superior Court.
