Warning – sad content: Matthew Sullivan's terrible secret with him when he moved home. He was killed by his brutality, Elizabeth, in the hope that no one will discover the truth
Life as a military wife is not always easy. In 2014, Elizabeth Sullivan had two young girls, between the ages of four and the two, and her American naval husband Matthew was often published abroad, leaving Elizabeth alone for long periods of time.
The cracks began to appear in their marriage and did not help that their relationship was the love story of boats. Elizabeth, 32, met a small officer in the navy Sullivan in Virginia, where she grew up. They got married in 2010 and moved to San Diego, where Sullivan was stationed at Liberty Station, but by 2012, their marriage was in trouble. They slept on separate floors in their three -storey sea residences, and it appears that Elizabeth began to speak to other men. The tensions were high.
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On at least one occasion, Sullivan had abused his wife physically. By 2014, things were so bad that she was talking to lawyers about separation. She knew that the nursery talks would be difficult. Friends were worried about how Elizabeth looked unhappy. She had been affected by herself in the past and stayed all night in the garden instead of going home.
So when Elizabeth lost in October 2014, they were concerned about her safety and contacted the police. Sullivan admitted that they were suffering from marital problems and said he was giving her a “space” so he was not worried at first. He said that it was not unusual for Elizabeth to remain outside, and for this reason he was not missing and assumed that she would leave him. But with the passage of days, Sullivan had to admit the press that it was fashionable to disappear more than one night.
Elizabeth was last seen on October 13 near her home and was wearing black pants and gray summit. She sent a text message to a family member before her phone was apparently stopped and her car is still parked at her home. As a mother of two young girls, it was worried that she was not in contact and her mobile phone was not used. He appealed to their loved ones safe, including Elizabeth's father, Edward Rex, who traveled from Virginia to search for his daughter. “I feel it is in trouble,” I admit.
Secrets at sea
A few weeks later, Sullivan spoke to the press and said he wanted to reunite his children with their mother, but there was no progress after 10 months, despite the appearance of the Elizabeth case on the programs of missing persons and through social media. The case ran cold.
Then on October 6, 2016, days after the second anniversary of Elizabeth's disappearance, one of the audiences reported a body floating in the Gulf of San Diego, half a mile from the place where she lived.
The body was badly decomposed, but it was determined as Elizabeth. I have been stabbed to death. When the police went to inform Sullivan, they discovered that on the same day as Elizabeth was found, he was leaving the army and moving from San Diego to the eastern coast with a new girlfriend. coincidence? The police did not think that. He has always been an interested person and escalated the investigation.
The police began collecting what they thought may have happened to Elizabeth. They took a more comprehensive look through Sullivans's house and found Elizabeth's blood steeped in the carpet and the wooden floor in its bedroom.
There was also a knife hidden under the isolation in the attic on which her blood was on. Investigators will learn that the next day, Elizabeth disappeared, Sullivan bought the carpet cleaner.
Again, it was a lot of chance to ignore it. Investigators believed that Sullivan had hidden the body of Elizabeth in the freezer in their garage for two years. But then he was forced to move the body when he was moving to a new house.
He knew that Elizabeth would find, so Sullivan threw her body in the Gulf, hoping that she would be washed into the sea. On January 31, 2018, Sullivan was finally arrested in Delaware and was transferred to San Diego, where he was charged with first -degree murder. He acknowledged that he was not guilty and held on bail of $ 2.1 million.
In February 2020, the trial began. The prosecution described Sullivan and Elizabeth's relationship as a love story that rapidly turned into violence. They said that Elizabeth was suffering from a relationship and discovered Sullivan. Elizabeth was also planning to leave and took children. She had already pulled $ 1,000 from her bank account. “He had a lot of motives. He had the means, and he had the opportunity,” the prosecution said. “The crime scene was in its bedroom. The murder was in the attic above its bedroom.” The jury was shown on the knife and told Elizabeth at least five times.
It was the upper and nose. The knife blade struck several ribs and left a pool of blood that was flooded on the floor of its bedroom. Sullivan's defense described a completely different version of events. They said that Sullivan was actually trying to adhere to his wife because she turned towards a “self -destroyed lifestyle”, which included drug use and sleep in the garden.
They claimed that the blood in the bedroom was a self -harm wound that had caused Elizabeth because it was under pressure. The knife is likely to be the item that she was hiding so that no one would discover what she was doing. But the claim indicated that there were many incidents of domestic violence in the months before Elizabeth's death.
They said that Sullivan killed his wife in their home and it was very likely that their children were in the other room when he attacked her. The prosecution said: “He made her look like the person who abandoned her family, when it was not the case and he knew that.” The jury circulated for a day and a half before you found Matthew not guilty of the murder of the first degree, but it was guilty of the second -degree murder.
The suffering of the loss
In March 2021, Sullivan, 36, now faced the referee. Elizabeth's loved ones spoke about their pain since her death. They said that she was loved by many and the years that had passed since the killing was suffering. Elizabeth's friend said that there is no punishment that will work on pain and that sharing his grief will not make Sullivan feel any difference towards his guilt.
Sullivan made a short statement saying that some defense witnesses were unable to testify and believe that if they were able to do so, they would have turned the case in his favor. “I believe a firm belief that their testimony would have changed the ruling in this trial,” he said.
The prosecution was given to him not to show any remorse for what he did and to allow everyone to believe for two years that Elizabeth just went out in her life. The judge agreed that he was a harsh killing. He said: “The ruling of the jury and the evidence in the trial explained that Matthew Sullivan brutally killed his wife, and cleaned the chaotic murder site systematically and then concealed the body for years.” “He almost escaped from that, but his recent attempt to hide the body at the bottom of the Gulf failed.”
Sullivan was sentenced to 16 years in prison. He had hidden his terrible action, and for a while, no one knew what he did. But the truth appeared with the body of Elizabeth from the waters of the Gulf of San Diego, and finally the law gave her the sound it deserves.
