A prominent Massachusetts doctor received his fate Friday after a jury convicted him in the strangulation death of his wife.

Dr. Ingolf “Harry” Tuerk, 63, was sentenced to between 12 and 16 years in prison with credit for time served in the death of his wife Kathleen McLean at their home in Dover. A jury found Tuerk guilty of the lesser count of voluntary manslaughter instead of first-degree murder in April.

McLean’s sister called her vibrant.

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“She always had a smile, she was calm. She had more patience than anyone I know,” Beth Melansen told the court.

The victim’s daughter, now 21, was home at the time of the incident.

“Five years ago I woke up in the middle of the night, looked down the stairs and saw Harry Tuerk,” she said. “I instantly knew something bad had happened. We made eye contact and since then I’ve been filled with a whole new level of fear I didn’t know was quite possible.”

Prosecutors argued the killing was premeditated because the doctor felt as if his wife was going to take his house and money in a divorce.

Tuerk took the stand in his own defense during his trial.

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“I didn’t like to cause death of another human being,” he testified. “I spent all my life to save lives. So I was pretty much in shock myself of what happened.”

At the sentencing, a tearful Tuerck apologized for his actions.

As Law&Crime previously reported, Tuerk claimed he and the victim started arguing while drinking. McLean hit Tuerk with an object; Tuerk strangled her until she passed out, realized she had died, and took her body to a pond.  There, he weighed the body down with rocks.

The death followed a series of domestic violence claims against the defendant. Police reports describe allegations in which Tuerk repeatedly beat and threatened McLean. For example, he allegedly threw her to the ground so hard in a January 2020 incident that her shoes were knocked off. In December 2019, he allegedly slammed her head into a headboard and strangled her while covering her nose and mouth.