After his pregnant wife confronted him about his affair and looked online for tips on how to handle a partner who is upset by pregnancy, he was found guilty of murdering her and given a life term in jail.
Beau Rothwell, 31, was given a life sentence without the possibility of parole on Friday for the murder of Jennifer Rothwell, 28, who was bludgeoned to death with a mallet in November 2019 after they got into a fight over another woman he was seeing.
In addition to being sentenced to four years for tampering with evidence and another four for abandoning a corpse, Rothwell was found guilty in April.
Though Rothwell’s defense said that the murder was not premeditated and tried to argue for a lesser manslaughter charge, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said the heavy murder sentencing was exactly what they were looking for.
‘We issued this case of murder first and as was stated in sentencing today, we never made any other offers,’ Bell said after the sentencing, ‘That was not an option. We felt that this individual needed to be held accountable for his actions and that’s what we were intent on doing.’
Rothwell admitted to killing his wife in court, and apologized to her family during his sentencing.
‘To Jennifer’s family, words cannot describe how sorry I am. This should have never happened,’ he said.
In his testimony, Rothwell said that on November 11, 2019, he and his wife got into a fight regarding an extramarital affair he was having and the woman’s pregnancy.
She stumbled towards the garage after he admitted hitting the back of her head with a hammer. He claimed to have pursued her and killed her after continuing to attack her.
When Jennifer was killed, she was six weeks along in her pregnancy.
In court, he claimed, “In the heat of the moment, I punched her again. I think I broke her skull.” She lost consciousness as she descended the steps.
Rothwell then attempted to haphazardly cover up the murder. He bought cleaning supplies and attempted to bleach his dead wife’s blood from the house. He drove her car to an intersection and abandoned it there, and tossed a blood-stained tarp and the cleaning supplies away together in a nearby dumpster.
Rothwell testified he went into ‘panic mode’ in the aftermath of the murder.
He dumped her naked corpse in the woods off Highway 61, then reported her missing, sent concerned texts to her cellphone, and took part in a search party.
It only took a day for authorities to identify still damp bleach and blood in the couple’s home and arrest Rothwell. Jennifer’s body was found a week later on November 19.
Although Rothwell claimed that the crime was committed in a “red haze” of rage and that he was “in panic mode” as he attempted to cover it up, the prosecution rejected the case for manslaughter and referred to the defendant as a “meticulous planner.”
They showed the jury texts between Rothwell and his lover as well as a list of advantages and disadvantages he wrote about leaving his wife, who was at the time six weeks pregnant.
“Jennifer was a bright light in our life,” Robin Von Hausen, Jennifer’s mother, said in an emotional statement to the court. We anticipated spending more than 28 years with her. The happy times spent with family and friends are long gone.