This murder occurred several years ago in my area. The husband was recently sentenced. If this had been an interracial pen pal marriage, probably everyone here and the rest of the world would have heard about this. Of course, the details that led up to the murder would have been left out. The Gabriela group would have SCREAMED even louder to end pen pal clubs and interracial relationships on the grounds that they were the cause. I've personally seen enough abuse, murder-suicides and even entire families dead, to realize that it's really about human nature and people...no religious, racial, or ethnic group is immune. Yes...some of the killers were even women.
"Hollywood man receives 15 years in fatal ax attack"
By Christy McKerney
A Hollywood man who hacked his wife to death with an ax in front of their children wiped tears from his eyes Friday as his daughter pleaded for leniency at his sentencing hearing.
"No matter what he did to my mother, he's still a good father," Elaine Wong, 19, told a Broward County judge shortly before her father, Pui Kei Wong, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the second-degree murder of his wife.
Too emotional to speak, Pui Kei Wong, 54, apologized to his family, his children and his friends in letters read by his attorney, Jeffrey Harris, and an interpreter who spoke Cantonese.
"I feel very painful in my heart," Wong said in an open letter to the court.
Wong said that his mind was "mixed up" when he killed his wife of 22 years, Nga Seong "Cannie" Wong, and that in jail he was working 10 hours a day, learning English and reading the Bible.
"Every day in jail I worry about my children, and I miss them very much," he said. "My only hope right now is to be able to get out of jail early, so I can be with my children while they're still young."
Wong's wife had been having an open affair with a cook at their North Miami restaurant, who lived with them at the end of 1997, according to previous court testimony.
Neither of his children wished to comment after the sentencing. A friend of the family, Sum Hui, 71, of Doral, said the children -- Elaine Wong and her 17-year-old brother -- live alone in Hollywood.
"I still wished he sentenced him more down because he has two children to educate," Hui said. "I believe if Mr. Wong come back to society he does no crime to disturb society."
Elaine Wong, testifying at trial on behalf of her father, told the jury her father was severely depressed and completely expressionless when he attacked her mother, striking 16 or 17 blows with the ax, mostly to her head.
On Jan. 19, 1998, Cannie Wong told her husband she was taking the car to visit her lover, and an argument broke out. According to testimony, she taunted her husband and threatened to divorce him and take the children, his house and his money.
And that's when he picked up an ax from the porch and started swinging at his wife's head. Their children could not stop him, and neighbors were too frightened to intervene.
Psychologist Sherrie Bourg Carter said Pui Kei Wong suffered from major depression with psychotic features.
But Broward Circuit Judge Joyce Julian ultimately rejected the argument by Wong's attorney to go below the guideline sentence of 13 to 22 years because he was suffering from severe depression at the time of the attack.
Harris had also argued that giving Wong 15 years was tantamount to giving him a death sentence, because he would be 69 years old when he gets out. In fact, Wong received credit for 1,515 days he's already spent in jail.
"That's not going to help him. That's not going to help his children. That's not going to help anyone," said Harris, who plans to appeal.
Prosecutor Brian Cavanagh said outside court that the sentence was fair, given the mental components of the case.
"You need a just sentence for the sake of society, but you also have to factor in the aggrieved parties," he said.
Wong's children, his brother-in-law and friends all asked for leniency and said he was a good man.
Unfortunately, Cavanagh said, "It would be nice if you can put the family together again, but one of them has been hacked to pieces and can't be brought back."
