Woman gets 10 years to life in poker pro slaying

LAS VEGAS—A woman has been sentenced to 10 years to life in a Nevada prison for stabbing her poker player husband to death in a luxury Las Vegas condominium.

Jill Rockcastle, 50, sobbed and professed her love for her dead husband, William Gustafik, during a rambling apology before sentencing Tuesday by Clark County District Court Judge Michael Villani.

"I just lost control," Rockcastle said.

Rockcastle pleaded an equivalent of no contest Sept. 16 to second-degree murder in the slaying of Gustafik, 44, a former California a corrections officer and chiropractor who became a Las Vegas poker pro and used the nickname "The Manipulator."

Her so-called Alford plea avoided trial and acknowledged that prosecutors could prove the case against her.

Rockcastle's public defense lawyer, Joseph Abood, cast his client as a battered wife who grabbed a knife and stabbed Gustafik after he grabbed her by the hair. Authorities said Gustafik was stabbed up to 15 times.

Prosecutor Sam Bateman said there was no evidence Gustafik was violent toward Rockcastle.

Police found Gustafik's body April 13, 2007, after a lawyer in California directed authorities to in a blood-spattered bedroom in a 23rd floor condo at the Panorama Towers across Interstate 15 from the Las Vegas Strip.

Rockcastle was arrested several days later, after she was found unconscious at a motel in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Police said they believed she overdosed on unspecified medication after leaving a note in a car for her children and sending confessional e-mails to friends.
In a suicide note, Rockcastle claimed Gustafik hired a hit man to kill his ex-wife so she wouldn't get custody of their daughter, and that Gustafik took performance-enhancing drugs and used cocaine.

Rockcastle said she and Gustafik underwent cosmetic surgery and hatched a scheme to sell fake real estate to maintain their high-roller lifestyle.

"We were living this fake life of millionaires. But we weren't," she wrote. "We were going broke."

Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com

News Added: 20 November, 2008

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