Brownsville Man Who Slashed Estranged Wife's Throat Gets 25 Years

BROWNSVILLE, BROOKLYN — A Brownsville man will spend 25 years to life in prison for murdering his estranged wife after following home from work, Brooklyn prosecutors said. Beresford Ashley, 48, was sentenced Wednesday following his November conviction on murder and weapon-possession charges stemming from the September 2016 slaying, prosecutors said.

"This defendant stalked and then mercilessly killed an innocent woman as she was trying to get away from him," Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. "He has now been held accountable for his cowardly actions and will spend many years in prison."

According to prosecutors, Ashley showed up at the Linden Boulevard nursing home where his wife, Karen Bartley, worked around 11:30 a.m. on Sept. 13, 2016. She spotted him, had a security guard walk her to her car and drove to her friend's house on Blake Avenue in East New York.

Ashley blocked her when she arrived about 10 minutes later and got inside her car, prosecutors said. He then slashed her throat from side to side and stabbed her several times before fleeing as Bartley's friend came out of her house, prosecutors said.

Ashley went to the 78th Police Precinct in Park Slope around 1:30 a.m. the next day with his hand bleeding, telling cops he "may have committed an offense" in an argument with his wife, the DA's office said. His and his wife's DNA was found in the car and on the T-shirt he was wearing, prosecutors said.

Analysts used a new software called STRmix to isolate Ashley's DNA from his wife's, prosecutors said. Ashley's trial was the first in which the software had been used, the DA's office said.

(Lead image: Beresford Ashley was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for murdering his estranged wife in 2016. Photo courtesy of the Brookly District Attorney's Office)