ROCKLAND, Maine (AP) - A former Maine resident who bashed his wife on the head with a rock and pushed her off an 800-foot cliff will serve 10 years in prison under a sentenced imposed Thursday.
Charles Black, 71, faced a maximum of 30 years in prison after a Maine jury convicted him of six felonies, including attempted murder, in July. The judge imposed a 25-year sentence but suspended most of it.
A jury convicted Black of pushing his then-wife Lisa Zahn off the 800-foot Maiden Cliff in Camden Hills State Park after hitting her in the head in April 2011. She survived, and both of them tumbled down the mountainside and were hospitalized for more than a week, prosecutors said.
Black and Zahn had been in a dispute about Black's online affair and his spending of some of Zahn's $4 million inheritance without her permission, prosecutors have said.
They were retired teachers who moved to Camden after careers in Kansas, where Zahn won a host of awards for excellence in teaching. They divorced after nine years of marriage.
Black was convicted of attempted murder, elevated aggravated assault and aggravated assault.
Zahn said during the trial that she remembered being hit three times on the head before she was pulled to the cliff's edge.
Black told police he'd collected two rocks while they were hiking on the mountaintop, with the intention of tossing them over a cliff to symbolize a new start.