Wilfrid Buteau fatally stabbed and beat his wife, Aliette Buteau, deputies say. (Mug shot: Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office)
A man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to fatally stabbing his wife with a knife and beating her with a claw hammer so badly he embedded the latter tool in her right eye socket. Wilfrid Buteau, 58, was sentenced to spend 28 years in a Florida prison, with 1,429 days of time-served credit, for killing Aliette Buteau, 49. The defendant pleaded to a charge of second-degree murder with a weapon.
Deputies arrived at a bloody scene on Dec. 10, 2019, in Palm Beach County.
“I think I need the police,” defendant Buteau told 911, according to documents.
Investigators found Aliette Buteau with a claw hammer impaling her eye and a blanket wrapped around her neck. They took it off, revealing a large cut across her throat. They also found a bloody, black-handled knife on the ground.
First responders pronounced her dead on the scene.
The partially redacted affidavit noted an 8-year-old was found unharmed at a neighbor’s residence.
This child was at home during the murder, WPBF reported in 2019. The victim’s sister, Irlande Saint Vil, told the outlet that the defendant had a baby with another woman while married to Aliette Buteau. Her sister treated the child as her own.
According to documents, Buteau claimed his wife had jumped on him while armed with a knife. He alleged that she had been abusing him for the past 14 years.
“She was swearing at me, and the voices told me to kill her,” he said in documents.
Investigators noted that he had no signs of injuries consistent with being jumped on or attacked with a knife.
The defendant was taken to a sheriff’s office substation where he asked for an attorney.
Saint Vil told WPBF in 2019 that her brother-in-law, a school bus driver, was faking the voices.
“There’s no voices,” she said. “There’s never any time anyone could say they witnessed him talking to himself or somebody else or even stated that he was hearing voices, and you can’t be a school bus driver if you have mental disabilities.”
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