New York Chef Decapitates Wife

[bloodrayne]

Jilted chef admits sawing off wife's head

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- A New York chef was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years to life in prison after strangling his wife, sawing off her head and stuffing her body in a suitcase for threatening to leave him.

Police say Oscar Pilamunga, 25, a chef at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan, became enraged in May 2003 when his wife, Beatrice Yually, 22, said she was leaving him for another man.

He choked her, cut off her head with a handsaw, put her body in a suitcase and dumped it on a street where it was discovered by startled residents, they said.

Pilamunga told police he tossed the head in a trash bin, but it has yet to be found.

"I killed my wife," Pilamunga told Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Carol Berkman during his plea hearing Tuesday.

"How?" the judge asked.

"I tried to strangle her," he replied.

"You did strangle her," the judge corrected him.

The victim, the mother of their two children, sold ices on the street. The couple, who came from Ecuador, had married nine years earlier when she was 13, police said.

Police were led to Pilamunga by a number of clues inside the suitcase, including a telephone number found in the dead woman's pocket.