American citizen William Trickett Smith II has been sentenced to 31 years in prison for the 2007 murder of his Peruvian wife, daily El Comercio reported.
He has also been ordered to pay $70,000 in civil reparation to the relatives of his wife, Jana Claudia Gomez.
Smith, a native of Pennsylvania, was found guilty of killing his wife in a Lima hotel room in July 2007, only a few months after they had married. The body was dumped in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the Peruvian capital in a blue suitcase.
However, the suitcase washed on shore and was found by local fishermen a day after the August 15, 2007 magnitude-8 earthquake that ravaged Peru’s southern coast.
Smith had traveled back to the U.S. and was arrested shortly after. Police found belongings of Gomez in his Paxtang home. In August 2010, he was extradited back to Peru to stand trial for the murder.
