Navy Officer Gets Life in Wife’s Death : Crime: Victim’s mother says Leonard Eddington ‘will pay in the hereafter for what he actually did do.’

More than five years after he bludgeoned his estranged wife to death and buried her in his back yard, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Leonard Earl Eddington II was sentenced Friday to spend the rest of his life in state prison.

“He will pay in the hereafter for what he actually did do,” said Alice Vess, the mother of the victim.

Last December, investigators with the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force found Vicki Eddington’s body in a ravine that had been covered over behind the couple’s home.

A jury convicted Eddington of first-degree murder a month ago.

Prosecutors convinced the panel that Eddington, 44, killed his 29-year-old wife to keep from losing his beloved home during acrimonious divorce proceedings. The special-circumstance allegation of murder for financial gain could have brought the death penalty, but prosecutors instead sought life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Superior Court Judge Herbert Exarhos handed down the mandatory sentence after he denied a plea for a new trial and listened to the victim’s parents again express how sorry they feel for Eddington.

“I feel sorry for Leonard Eddington, for I, myself, could not have done anything to him that could have fouled up his life as well as he’s done himself,” said Elmer Vess, Vicki Eddington’s father and a high priest in the Mormon church.

The Vesses maintained from the time their daughter disappeared on July 30, 1987, that her husband was responsible, a suspicion given credence by Eddington’s refusal to allow family members to walk in his back yard after she was reported missing.

“I’m sorry that he’s put himself out there, and now he has got to live with what he’s got,” Alice Vess said after the sentence was announced.

She blamed the crime on the couple’s inability to reach a divorce settlement and on the stress caused by the death of Eddington’s father five months before the killing.

“I think that the anger came along and he figured out how he could take care of it,” Alice Vess said. “Then all he had to do was to get himself out of it, and that man is an intelligent man.”

For the first time in the case, Eddington appeared in court wearing a blue suit instead of his Navy uniform, complete with ribbons and gold stripes on the sleeves.

Eddington was convicted after a one-week trial in which Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Dusek presented a strong case built on circumstantial evidence. While he contended that the body buried in the back yard was the crucial fact in the case, the jury also heard evidence that a flat tire on the victim’s abandoned car was caused by punctures that were made from the inside of the tire.

Dusek also offered testimony from one of Eddington’s Navy companions, who said the defendant claimed he would not give up his home--or else he would take a chain saw to the house and his wife if she got in the way.

Vicki Eddington was living in the Jamul residence with her three children at the time of the killing, and her husband was living in a mobile home on property next door that his mother owned.

During the trial, three neighbors testified that they saw Eddington only two to three weeks after his wife disappeared operating a small bulldozer where the body was eventually found.

Defense attorney Milly Durovic said Eddington will appeal both his conviction on murder charges and the financial-gain allegation.

The Vesses are trying to gain custody of the oldest Eddington child and control of the Jamul property, which they want to sell to help support the three Eddington children.

The Vesses also want the unique diamond-inside-a-rose wedding ring that Vicki Eddington wore for 12 years. Leonard Eddington, who gave the ring to three fiances after his wife’s death, is opposed.

Exarhos will hold a hearing to determine if the ring should be returned to the woman who eventually married Eddington or if the Vesses should receive it.