Wife Kills Husband in His Sleep

On the morning of Dec. 2, 2007, FDNY rising star fire marshal Douglas Mercereau was shot several times in the head while his two children were asleep in another room. Their mother, Janet (pictured), a school teacher, claimed to be with their ill daughter in that second room and not to have heard any shots. She said that she called the police upon discovering her husband's blood-splattered body under the covers.

But the couple had a troubled marriage, often fighting about Janet's weight. Investigators instead believed that she had waited until several hours after the shooting before calling the cops, and spent much of the "missing" time running the murder weapon — her husband's service revolver — through her dishwasher and washing the clothes she had worn when she pulled the trigger. A jury convicted her of the murder, and she's in jail on a 25 years-to-life sentence. "If you're in a bad marriage, you get a divorce," Assistant District Attorney Yolanda Rudich said after the verdict. "You don't shoot your husband when he sleeps."