man who killed wife in front of stepdaughter gets maximum sentence

2023-11-04 22:54:06 Written by Alex

The crime was brutal: Mac Lewis, learning his wife wanted a divorce, shot and killed Lizzie Bennett Lewis at their Sellersburg home. It was April 2022, and her 11-year-old daughter and her 10-year-old friend were there.

Ahead of his sentencing Thursday in Clark County, he told the judge, "Everyone thinks I'm a monster but I'm not. It was an accident."

Lizzie Bennett Lewis was found in a closet shot four times. And the dialysis machine Mac Lewis relied on three times a week was still running. His wife, a nurse, still planned to do his dialysis that night and, according to her father, was going to give her soon-to-be ex a kidney.

"His response to that kindness? He took her life when he realized his meal ticket had expired. He did so in the most cold and brutal fashion," the victim's father, Tony Bennett, said during his victim impact statement.

Bennett asked the judge for the maximum sentence. While Lewis' aunt, who cried, saying she felt torn because she loved her nephew's wife so much, pleaded for a lesser sentence.

"Please have a little mercy," Patricia Lewis Slaughter told the judge before turning to the family and saying, "And I'm sorry guys, I'm not trying to disrespect you."

Ultimately Mac Lewis got the maximum: 100 years.

It came minutes after Bennett Lewis' two young daughters, now 13 and 15, testified. The oldest, Mckenna Mullen, told her stepfather, "I hope the rest of your life is as miserable as you have made ours."

Later Mullen, speaking alongside her grandfather, told WLKY of making a victim impact statement, "I did it for my mom and also my sister, and I think that was what was needed to be said."

Bennett said he was grateful his granddaughters will never have to worry about their mother's killer being released from prison.

"He's going to be in the place where broken people go for the rest of their lives, and I hope it's as miserable as he has made us for the last 18 months," Bennett said.

Mac Lewis' legal team plans to appeal Thursday's sentencing.

Lewis, who did not testify during his trial, addressed the court for the first time, per WHAS. He apologized for the pain he’d caused his wife’s loved ones but maintained that the ordeal was an accident.

“I really didn’t mean for my actions,” he reportedly said. “Everybody thinks I’m a monster. But I’m not. It was an accident. I’m not a monster. I know it was an accident. I loved Lizzie to death.”