Inset: Kathleen McLean (Brown & Hickey Funeral Home). Background: Ingolf Tuerk, right, during his sentencing hearing in McLean’s death (Law&Crime).
A prominent Massachusetts doctor received his fate Friday after a jury convicted him in the strangulation death of his wife.
Dr. Ingolf “Harry” Tuerk, 63, received a sentence ranging from 12 to 16 years in prison, taking into account time already served, for the death of his wife Kathleen McLean at their Dover residence. In April, a jury found Tuerk guilty of voluntary manslaughter, a lesser charge than first-degree murder.
McLean’s sister called her vibrant.
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“She always had a smile, she was calm. She had more patience than anyone I know,” Beth Melansen told the court.
The victim’s daughter, now 21, was home at the time of the incident.
“Five years ago I woke up in the middle of the night, looked down the stairs and saw Harry Tuerk,” she recounted. “In that moment, I instantly knew something bad had happened. We made eye contact, and since then, I’ve been overwhelmed by a level of fear I didn’t realize was possible.”
Prosecutors argued the killing was premeditated because the doctor felt as if his wife was going to take his house and money in a divorce.
Tuerk took the stand in his own defense during his trial.
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“I didn’t like to cause death of another human being,” he testified. “I spent all my life to save lives. So I was pretty much in shock myself of what happened.”
At the sentencing, a tearful Tuerck apologized for his actions.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Tuerk claimed he and the victim started arguing while drinking. McLean hit Tuerk with an object; Tuerk strangled her until she passed out, realized she had died, and took her body to a pond. There, he weighed the body down with rocks.
The death followed a series of domestic violence claims against the defendant. Police reports describe allegations in which Tuerk repeatedly beat and threatened McLean. For example, he allegedly threw her to the ground so hard in a January 2020 incident that her shoes were knocked off. In December 2019, he allegedly slammed her head into a headboard and strangled her while covering her nose and mouth.
Another alleged incident involved Tuerk grabbing scissors. Authorities say he told his wife that he was “king of this castle.” He allegedly said she was just a guest, then cut off a piece of her hair. This allegedly resulted in her hand getting cut when she tried to stop him.
McLean ended up asking to clear a restraining order against her husband and didn’t want him prosecuted. Tuerk would undergo therapy, and the couple would go to counseling. She said she did it for the sake of their family, according a May 2 court affidavit. She would die about two weeks later; she was last seen on May 14, 2020.
Tuerk, a urologist, got in trouble in November 2019 over a billing dispute with the Massachusetts Medicaid program. He was ordered by the state attorney general to pay $150,000.
