He Said He 'Snapped' — Now the Surgeon Who Strangled Wife and Dumped Body in Pond Learns Fate

A once-prominent Massachusetts surgeon has been sentenced to 12 to 16 years in state prison for murdering his wife, whose body was found in a pond weighed down by rocks near their home in 2020.

“I can’t imagine a human being’s last moments on earth while being strangled by her husband, it’s simply difficult to fathom,” a judge said during Ingolf Tuerk’s Friday, May 16 sentencing, CBS News reported.  

Tuerk, 63, was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter on April 11 in connection with the death of 45-year-old Kathleen McLean, a mother of three.

He was initially charged with murder.

During his trial, Tuerk testified that he grabbed Kathleen’s neck after she threw a glass at his head but said he didn’t intend to harm his wife of five months.

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“I snapped, I kind of blacked out,” he said, per CBS News. “I grabbed her. On the neck.” 

After the killing, the former head of urology at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Boston was later found unresponsive at a Residence in Dedham and was taken to a local hospital.

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According to the Commonwealth’s sentencing memorandum obtained by PEOPLE, Tuerk, who went by Harry, married McLean, a reiki master who owned Birch Tree Energy and Healing in Sudbury, in December 2019 but the relationship “quickly deteriorated.”

A restraining order was issued against Tuerk to leave the couple’s home in Feb. 2020. However, the couple attempted to reconcile and on May 14, they spent the evening together with her three children at their home.

Later that night, per the sentencing memorandum, Tuerk strangled McLean after an argument and “disposed of her body in a pond and weighed her down with rocks.”

“When her body was recovered, she was clothed only in yoga pants,” according to the sentencing memorandum. “The defendant had placed two rocks in her pants, to weigh her down.”

At one point he texted a friend: “I am sorry brother But she is a vindictive devil, she played us all, I am really sorry brother, but she manipulated us all love you Harry.”

The father of two rose to local fame as a doctor specializing in robotic and laparoscopic surgery for urinary obstruction at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston, where he was head of urology. He was later terminated after being investigated for inappropriately billing the state’s Medicaid program, court records show, according to the Boston Herald.

During Friday’s sentencing, in a victim’s impact statement, McLean’s son Sam Rocca told the court that the “past five years have been the worst, loneliest years of my life,” he said, per CBS News. “It’s hard to have a childhood when you can’t sleep, you’re crying all the time and just everything feels like a lot and you have no mom to tell you, ‘don’t worry, it’ll be OK.'” 

Tuerk also spoke out, apologizing to McLean.

“I’m sorry, Katie. Please forgive me for having reacted in such a way on May 15, 2020, that it caused the end of your life,” he read, per Boston25News. “I’m thinking about you every day. I wish I could make it all unhappen.”

He also apologized to McLean’s children.  

“I’ve been waiting for five years to be able to reach out to Katie’s children,” Tuerk said, according to Boston25News. “Please accept my condolences and apologies, Sophia, Grace, and Sam, for having taken your mom away from you. I can’t even imagine the pain I’ve caused you.”

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.