Illinois Man Who Drowned Wife For Insurance Remains Jailed

Herald & Review (Decatur, IL)

Dec. 12--MOUNT ZION -- Chad M. Cutler, the Mount Zion man serving 45 years in prison for the murder of his wife, Lisa Cutler, has failed in his bid to overturn his conviction on appeal.

In a ruling handed down Nov. 27, the 4th District Appellate Court unanimously rejected his appeal and affirmed the Macon County Circuit Court jury conviction reached on June 25, 2015, on a charge of first-degree murder. Cutler, now 42, was sentenced Aug. 7, 2015, for killing his 47-year-old wife, a Decatur teacher, by drowning her in the bathtub of their Mount Zion home on the night of April 26, 2012.

In the 11 points of his appeal, Cutler attacked the original conviction on grounds as varied as inappropriately allowing hearsay evidence, prosecutorial misconduct over the way medical experts were questioned and ineffective assistance from his defense attorney, Jeff Justice.

The three appellate judges ruled that many of his claims failed at the first hurdle because they had not been raised earlier and at trial and were therefore "procedurally forfeited."

Reacting to the appellate court verdict Tuesday, Macon County State's Attorney Jay Scott said he was not surprised the Cutler appeal had been rejected. Scott said both he and First Assistant State's Attorney Nichole Kroncke worked hard with Mount Zion police, the Macon County Sheriff's Office, Illinois State Police and others to put together "a very solid case" with plenty for forensic and other evidence.

"Nichole and I thought it was a real clean trial, and I never gave a second thought to him getting a reversal (of the conviction) on appeal," Scott said.

The appeals court also ruled that other evidence stood on its own merits and deserved to be included in the case against Cutler. The judges, for example, cited the fact evidence showed Cutler had purchased $700,000 of additional life insurance on his wife shortly before her death, rather than his wife having made the purchase, as the defendant claimed.

"That would have made no sense," the appellate court said in its 94-page ruling. "Her eagerness to divorce him makes it more likely that he was the one who, posing as her, purchased the additional life insurance -- with the intent of murdering her and collecting the proceeds."

Cutler's greed and his hatred of his wife, a Spanish teacher at Eisenhower High School, had been central themes of the original court case. Scott had wanted to see him get a life sentence, and Kroncke said at the time that the cold premeditation of the murder and the brutal way of carrying it out would have merited the death penalty before the state had abolished capital punishment.

Evidence introduced at trial said Cutler's contempt for his dead spouse had continued after her death. He was described as flirting with other women even at her visitation, dropping off "shabby, unlaundered clothing" for his wife's body to be dressed in for her funeral and then flirting with staff at the funeral home.

Cutler's defense claimed his wife, whose body showed prominent bruising, had died after falling backwards in the bathtub. The tub itself had formed part of the evidence in the case, being positioned in the courtroom in front of Judge James Coryell's bench.

Aside from robbing Lisa Cutler's two children of their mother (they were ages 8 and 11 at the time of their father's arrest) the case had other tragic consequences. During sentencing, Lisa Cutler's family described how Rich Ransdell, who had been particularly close to his murdered sister, went on a drinking binge after her death and suffered a fatal heart attack five days before the murder trial began.

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Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid

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