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Fifteen-Year Term In Case Of Vanished Kansas City Wife

Renee Pernice as pictured on posters in her Kansas City, North neighborhood. Her husband has been sentenced to 15 years for voluntary manslaughter, her body entombed in a landfill.
Dan Verbeck
/
KCUR
Renee Pernice as pictured on posters in her Kansas City, North neighborhood. Her husband has been sentenced to 15 years for voluntary manslaughter, her body entombed in a landfill.

Former Independence, Mo. firefighter Shon Pernice was sentenced today to the maximum term for the voluntary manslaughter of his wife.

Authorities  expect they will never be able to find the  body.

Pernice briefly told a Clay County Circuit Court Judge at Liberty, Missouri he was sorry for, as he put it, “the act “ committed in January of 2009.

Pernice could have gotten as few as 5 years in prison. Fifteen was maximum.

Pernice had told the court he  struck his wife, Renee and she fell down stairs.  Pernice said he believed he fall killed her.  And he arranged for her dead body to be picked up as trash, taken to a landfill in Shawnee, Kansas.

Prosecutors said there was no way Renee Pernice’s remains could ever be recovered and the Deffenbaugh landfill is her final resting place.

Clay County Prosecutor Dan White said he was satisfied with the sentence, although he wished the law allowed Pernice to serve more time.

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