Teacher:In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? Solve this instance: A Pennsylvania man convicted of fatally shooting his wife, tying her body to an anchor and tossing it into Lake Erie, then trying to cover up the crime by claiming she had apparently fallen overboard, was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. 
  
 A judge Tuesday imposed the mandatory sentence on 49-year-old Christopher Leclair and added up to 17 years for charges including abuse of a corpse, evidence-tampering and false reports, the Erie Times-News reported. 
  
 "There was almost a recognizable gasp in this community when this crime was committed," Erie County President Judge John Trucilla said. "The depravity and depths that you went to calculate this murder are unlike any this court has ever seen." 
  
 Prosecutors said the Albion resident was having an affair and killed his 51-year-old wife, Karen Leclair, in the summer of 2017 because his girlfriend had given him an ultimatum to choose between her and his wife. 
  
 Dock surveillance video showed the two heading out on their commercial fishing boat on June 10 and him returning alone. He went out on the vessel by himself the next day, putting out a distress call saying his wife had apparently fallen overboard. 
  
 Her body was found in July a few miles from Dunkirk, New York, which is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Erie. Authorities said she had been shot in the head, tied up and an anchor attached to her body. 
  
 Defense attorney Bruce Sandmeyer, who argued at trial that Karen Leclair killed herself because she was upset that her husband had been cheating on her, told the judge Tuesday that his client "continues to assert his innocence." 
  
 The defense conceded that Leclair tied his wife's body to the anchor and dropped her into the lake, but Sandmeyer said that his client dumped the body because he didn't want anyone to know that his actions had caused his wife to take her own life. 
  
 Authorities, however, presented testimony that Leclair had also told acquaintances of a plan to kill his wife and drop her body into Lake Erie on several occasions before his wife disappeared. The judge ordered him to pay $705,974 in restitution to the Coast Guard for the search. 
  
 Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ||||| Christopher Leclair gets life plus up to 17 years for killing wife Karen Leclair Video 
  
 A convicted murderer maintains his innocence as the judge reads a sentence of life in prison without parole. 
  
 Why not just get a divorce? That's the question that still remained as Christopher Leclair returned to the courthouse one last time for sentencing. 
  
 President Judge John Trucilla says this murder was not only deprived, but the most calculated and sophisticated he's ever seen. 
  
 The Victim's Brother, Frank Case, tells us, "You had the two opposites, just like positive and negative; selfless and selfish and we know the story on that." 
  
 49-year-old Christopher Leclair now facing life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus up to 17 years for related charges. 
  
 But, prosecutors say the story began long before he pulled the trigger. Evidence shows Leclair had a plan to kill wife Karen Leclair for more than a decade, and that became a reality on June 10th of last year. 
  
 A jury found the defendant guilty of first-degree murder for shooting his wife in the head, tying her to an anchor, and tossing her body into Lake Erie. 
  
 During trial, Leclair's attorney said Karen committed suicide; that's the story the defendant stuck to at sentencing. 
  
 Elizabeth Hirz, First Assistant District Attorney, says, "Well, it's absolutely a ridiculous defense. It's a ridiculous story, another one of his depraved lies." 
  
 But, prosecutors say this case was about more than just the crime, also a long history between the defendant and the victim. 
  
 Hirz says, "She's just a beautiful woman who was trying to keep her marriage together and standing by this man who just continually lied to her, lied about her, embarrassed her..." 
  
 Now, Karen's family is ready to move forward as the defendant still claims he's innocent. 
  
 Frank says, "He is blatantly arrogant and has been ever since I've known him and it's just Chris. His father taught him well. That's all I can say." 
  
 In trial, the prosecution presented evidence saying Leclair had asked his father to "make it vanish" in regards to the .38 caliber revolver. 
  
 Bruce Sandmeyer, Defense Attorney, says, "It was a very complex case. It was not a cut and dry case. The trial went for over a week." ||||| Christopher Leclair was convicted of first-degree murder in Karen Leclair's death. 
  
 The 25-year marriage of Karen Leclair and her husband, Christopher S. Leclair, was a pairing of a selfless life and a selfish one, Erie County President Judge John J. Trucilla said Tuesday. 
  
 The selfless life of Karen Leclair ended in the depths of Lake Erie in June 2017. 
  
 The selfish life, Trucilla ruled, is now destined to end in prison. 
  
 Trucilla sentenced Christopher Leclair, 49, to serve the mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole plus three years and nine months to 17 years for first-degree murder and other charges in Karen Leclair's death. 
  
 Before issuing the sentence, Trucilla contrasted 51-year-old Karen Leclair, the beloved family member and coworker, with her husband. Karen Leclair worked to repair their marriage even while Christopher Leclair cheated on her and plotted to kill her, Trucilla said. 
  
 A jury found in October that Leclair carried out the plan on June 10, 2017, when he shot Karen Leclair on the couple's commercial fishing vessel, bound and weighted her body with rope and an anchor and threw her body into Lake Erie. 
  
 "There was almost a recognizable gasp in this community when this crime was committed," Trucilla said. "The depravity and depths that you went to calculate this murder are unlike any this court has ever seen." 
  
  
  
 Leclair declined to speak on his own behalf at the hearing. His court-appointed lawyer, Bruce Sandmeyer, told Trucilla that Leclair maintains his innocence and continues to argue, as he did at trial, that Karen Leclair shot herself on the boat because she could not stand her husband's ongoing affair. 
  
 Christopher Leclair was all but guaranteed to receive life in prison when jurors convicted him of first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence, and other charges, including abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence and false reports, at his weeklong trial in October. The jury deliberated for less than two hours before delivering the verdict. 
  
 Trucilla added time to the life sentence for the additional charges and ordered Leclair to pay $705,974 in restitution to the U.S. Coast Guard for the massive search that was conducted when Leclair falsely reported his wife had fallen overboard and gone missing on Lake Erie a day after her death. 
  
 Prosecutors charged at Leclair's trial that he put into action a long-held plan to kill his wife on Lake Erie as his girlfriend pushed him to get a divorce and commit to the new relationship. 
  
 "Rather than just leave her, this man decides to take her out to his boat and shoot her," First Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Hirz said Tuesday. "It's chilling what he did that day." 
  
 Christopher Leclair claimed at his trial that his wife was so distraught over his affair that she shot herself aboard their fishing vessel, the Doris-M. Leclair did not testify at the trial, but in letters written from the Erie County Prison, he claimed that he dumped Karen Leclair's body in Lake Erie because he felt guilty and did not want anyone to know what happened. 
  
 A boater ultimately found Karen Leclair's body about 6 miles off the coast of Dunkirk, New York, on July 4, 2017. 
  
 The prosecution presented surveillance video footage that showed Leclair boarding the Doris-M with his wife at Erie's East Basin on June 10, 2017, and returning alone later that day. He returned to the vessel by himself on June 11, 2017, shortly before he made the distress call to the Coast Guard. 
  
 Leclair had also told acquaintances of a plan to kill his wife and drop her body into Lake Erie on several occasions before his wife disappeared, according to their testimony at his trial. 
  
 Leclair's father, 76-year-old Ernest C. Leclair, is also awaiting prosecution on one count of tampering with evidence. Pennsylvania State Police charged that Ernest Leclair moved a hidden gun to a new location at his son's Elk Creek Township home after Christopher Leclair contacted him from the Erie County Prison. 
  
 Ernest Leclair has applied to end his case in Erie County's Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program, which allows first-time, nonviolent offenders to end their case without pleading guilty and have their record expunged if they complete a period of supervision. 
  
 Before he sentenced Christopher Leclair Tuesday, Trucilla focused on the memory of Karen Leclair, whom he called "a ray of light." 
  
 "She gave of herself to the very end," he said. 
  
 Frank Case, Karen Leclair's brother, said after the hearing that there can be no true justice for what happened to his sister. 
  
 "The sentences definitely take (Christopher Leclair) out of society, as well he should have been," Case said. "I pray that Chris finds and makes peace with his maker because otherwise he will surely be lost." 
  
 Case used the same word as Trucilla to describe his late sister. 
  
 "One word: selfless," Case said. "You had the two opposites, just like positive and negative. Selfless and selfish." 
  
 Madeleine O'Neill can be reached at 870-1728 or by email. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ETNoneill. |||||
Student:
A Pennsylvania man who hoped to shack up with his girlfriend after killing his wife of 25 years will instead be confined to a prison bed for life. Christopher Leclair maintained his innocence even as a judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole on Tuesday, describing the June 10, 2017, murder of 51-year-old Karen Leclair as the most calculated and sophisticated he's seen, per YourErie.com. Before finding Leclair guilty of first-degree murder after less than two hours of deliberations in October, a jury heard prosecutors describe how the 49-year-old had plotted to kill his wife over a decade, ultimately shooting her in the head and tying her body to an anchor dropped off the couple's commercial fishing boat into Lake Erie, reports GoErie.com. Per the AP, Leclair's girlfriend had demanded he choose between the two women. Surveillance video showed the married couple setting out on the boat on June 10, with the husband returning alone. Despite evidence that Leclair asked his father (charged with one count of evidence tampering) to get rid of a .38 caliber revolver, the defendant—who initially claimed his wife fell overboard—argued at trial that his wife shot herself amid her husband's ongoing affair. "It's a ridiculous story, another one of his depraved lies," a prosecutor said, per YourErie.com. As the judge put it to Leclair, "the depravity and depths that you went to calculate this murder are unlike any this court has ever seen," GoErie.com notes. Handed up to 17 additional years for abuse of a corpse, evidence tampering, and other crimes, Leclair was also ordered to pay $705,974 in restitution to the US Coast Guard for the search for his wife's body, found a month after the murder by a boater near Dunkirk, NY.