A Fort Worth man will spend the rest of his life in prison for killing his wife while their children slept in a nearby room.
Shalen Gardner, 37, pleaded guilty to capital murder for the killing of his estranged wife, Elanceia "Lana" Gardner.
It happened back in November of 2017 inside their duplex on Fairmount Ave.
In exchange for the guilty plea, Gardner was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
"We were initially going to seek the death penalty," said Allenna Bangs, Tarrant County assistant criminal district attorney. "We eventually waived the death penalty in an effort to sort of expedite and be able to get the case to trial."
The guilty plea came late last week as jury selection was set to begin.
"The defendant asked for a plea of murder with the possibility of parole, which the state rejected," said Bangs. "And then the defense counsel came back and said he just wanted to plead and take the life without parole, which is really the only option once you've waived the death penalty on a capital murder case."
The couple's son was 12 and their daughter was 10 at the time of the killing.
"She was left in her son's room," said Bangs. "He was up for school and couldn't find her and went into his room. He noticed that she was nude, so he shut the door and went and got his sister and asked her if she would go check on mom. And when she went in there, (she) noticed that she couldn't wake up and there was blood on her face."
The kids, who are now 17 and 15, were set to testify in the capital murder trial.
"In the criminal world, you can't really just do depositions and admit those," Bangs said, "so they were going to testify to what it is that they saw and found, which would obviously be very impactful and dramatic testimony."
Lana's mother, Neia Roland-Hill, wrote a letter that was read during the sentencing.
"We welcomed you into our family as one of our own," Roland-Hill wrote in her letter. "We accepted you as a family member. You decided to take away the very person who made life worth living. She loved you even when you were unlovable."
Bangs said given what they have been through, the kids are doing remarkably well.
"There will be years of counseling," said Bangs. "There have been years of counseling. But they're both doing rather well."
"You may have taken their mother away," Roland-Hill's letter continued, "but you can never steal their joy, their spirit, their future or happiness or their hope."
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