Ex-Surgeon Gets 15 Years to Life for Strangling Wife
A former surgeon who claimed his wife died while choking on a lemon Danish pastry received the maximum sentence Friday for strangling her.
Harvey Jacobs, 57, who was convicted in January of second-degree murder, was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
“This is supposed to be a court of truth, and it has not been,” Jacobs said Friday.
Jacobs called 911 on April 25, 1999, the morning his wife of two weeks, Nadine, died. He told authorities the 52-year-old woman apparently had choked on a pastry. Police arrested him a week later after the San Diego County medical examiner determined that she had been strangled and the pastry forced into her nose and mouth to make it appear that she had choked.
An autopsy showed broken cartilage in her neck and trauma to both sides of her neck, her arms and back.
The couple met through personal ads about a year before their wedding and had briefly lived together.
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