Wife Says She Killed to Defend Herself

An Air Force spouse charged with murdering her husband on a military base in Turkey testified Tuesday that she stabbed him in self-defense as he was preparing to punch her during a drunken rage.

“I just wanted him to leave, I just wanted him to leave,” a sobbing Latasha Arnt, 24, told a federal court jury in Los Angeles, where she is being tried on a charge of second-degree murder.

Prosecutors say she intentionally killed her husband after discovering a love letter and seductive photos sent to him by an old girlfriend at his request.

Arnt, of Moreno Valley, is the first person to be prosecuted under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which allows for civilians who accompany military personnel abroad to be returned to the United States for trial if the host country declines to prosecute. The law was enacted four years ago to close a loophole that had allowed some American civilians to go unpunished for crimes abroad.

Arnt testified Tuesday that her husband, Matthias, a 24-year-old military police officer, had returned drunk to their living quarters at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey on May 26, 2003, after attending a party thrown by military friends. A test showed his blood-alcohol content to be 0.26%.

In an ensuing argument, Arnt said, she told him that she was fed up with his drinking and lying. She said she planned to return to the United States with their 5-month-old daughter.

At that point, she said, Sgt. Arnt began pacing the floor and slamming doors, “yelling at me that he’d kill me before he’d let me leave with the baby.”

Frightened, Arnt said, she telephoned friends and asked for someone to come and get her husband. When they arrived, Sgt. Arnt was lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, mortally wounded by a knife through the heart.

During a reenactment performed for the jury with Guy Iverson, a deputy federal public defender, Arnt demonstrated how her 6-foot-4, 250-pound husband allegedly slapped her face, grabbed her by the neck and tried to strike her with a large, wrought-iron candlestick holder.

She said she retreated to the kitchen, pursued by her husband. He was preparing to throw a punch, she said, when she grabbed a steak knife from a counter and stabbed him. Arnt then called military police. The sergeant was pronounced dead at a base hospital.

On cross-examination, Assistant U.S. Atty. Jerry A. Behnke displayed the letter and photographs that Sgt. Arnt had received from his former paramour. “Hey, sweetie,” the letter began, “here are the pictures you asked for.” It was signed, “Kisses, kisses.”

“Weren’t you angry?” the prosecutor asked Arnt.

“More disappointed than angry,” she said.

The prosecution’s cross-examination will continue today.