Ex-Husband Gets 29 Years in Slaying

Still saying that she drove him to it, a Woodland Hills physician convicted of fatally shooting his ex-wife outside divorce court was sentenced Thursday to 29 years in prison.

Prosecutors had asked that Harry Zelig, who was convicted last month of first-degree murder, receive the maximum penalty of 35 years to life for gunning down his ex-wife, Eileen Zelig, at a downtown courthouse in front of their 6-year-old daughter.

The sentence was imposed by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Edward A. Ferns. The 50-year-old west San Fernando Valley man could conceivably emerge from prison when he is elderly, but not before serving a minimum of 28 years, according to authorities.

“I was hoping to get the maximum sentence because what he did was so egregious,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Steven Slavitt said afterward. “He shot her in cold blood and brought a gun to the courthouse.”

Zelig caught the mother of three “at her most vulnerable, where she thought the law could protect her,” Slavitt said.

As he had done throughout his murder trial, the portly, pallid Zelig sought to portray himself Thursday as an anxious and ailing man who endured taunts about his impotence and the two-year divorce battle.

According to Zelig, the courthouse shooting took place while he was in an uncontrollable haze of rage and fear that coincided with an emotional anniversary--the day his parents were incarcerated in a World War II concentration camp.

Zelig, a former consultant to the California Medical Board, apologized to his children and other family members in a statement in court Thursday. Zelig raised eyebrows when he stated that a heart attack caused his ex-wife’s death rather than a mortal wound resulting from a gunshot.

Reading to the court from the handwritten statement, Zelig compared himself to the biblical character Samson, who is tormented and betrayed by his lover Delilah.

Prosecutors said Zelig talked of killing his ex-wife at least a year before before he fired the fatal shot, even telling one man he would commit the act in court.

Zelig’s lawyer, Ed Rucker, declined to comment.

During the trial Zelig never denied that he entered the downtown civil courthouse with a .38-caliber handgun Sept. 1, 1995, and shot his 40-year-old ex-wife in the neck with a single round.

“He acted as judge, jury and executioner,” the victim’s brother Tom Jensen, told the court Thursday. “He sentenced every member of our family and permanently and irrevocably altered our lives. You can’t imagine the pain.”