Aug 3, 2024 By Mike Jones 2 min read

The North Strabane man who shot and killed his wife in their townhouse more than a decade ago will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Scott Edmonds received the mandatory life sentence – plus one to two years – while appearing for his hearing Thursday before Judge John DiSalle in Washington County Court of Common Pleas.

Edmonds, 60, was convicted July 16 of first-degree murder in the shooting death of his wife, Louise Weis-Edmonds.

Weis-Edmonds was 49 at the time of her death on March 25, 2014, when Edmonds shot her in the back of the head with a handgun in the kitchen of their Victoria Drive townhouse in North Strabane.

During the five-day trial last month, Edmonds testified in his own defense and claimed his wife shot herself with the 380 Ruger pistol. But witnesses for the prosecution said that would have been nearly impossible for Weis-Edmonds to do because of the level of her alcohol intoxication at the time of her death. The handgun was found in the pocket of a pool table in an adjacent room, indicating that the weapon had been moved after Weis-Edmonds had died.

The jury took less than 90 minutes to convict him on the felony first-degree murder charge, along with an additional misdemeanor count of evidence tampering. However, it took more than a decade for the case to go to trial since Edmonds constantly feuded with his defense attorneys and fired multiple lawyers.

After being led away by sheriff’s deputies following the jury’s verdict last month, Edmonds indicated he planned to appeal his conviction.

He has been held without bond at the Washington County jail while awaiting trial and will eventually be transferred to a state prison to serve his sentence. He is still facing charges in two unrelated cases – simple assault for a fight at the jail in March 2022 and forgery charges for signing his previous attorney’s name on court documents later that year – although it’s not known when he will go to trial in those cases.