Jacque Waller's sister, son give emotional testimony at hearing

Jacque Waller's sister, and one of her triplets, raked Clay Waller over the coals after his admission of killing his wife Jacque Waller.

At a Thursday hearing in which Clay Waller pleaded guilty to killing Jacque Waller and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, Jacque's sister Cheryl Brenneke gave a victim-impact statement. And a recording of an angry message from Jacque and Clay Waller's son Maddox, now 7 years old, to his guilty father was played.

Brenneke has custody of Clay and Jacque Waller's 7-year-old triplets.

Onlookers were silent, but a few could be seen fighting tears and dabbing at their faces with tissues as the child's voice filled the courtroom.

"To Dad: This is Maddox. The son of you. You killed our mom," Maddox Waller said in his recorded statement. "You're a big, fat jerk. Do you know that? You shouldn't have killed our mom. ... I thought you were a good guy. Now I know you're not. You big, fat jerk, you. I wish you weren't ... my dad. ... I never want to see you again. You understand? We don't like you anymore. This is the last time you'll hear of me, OK? Bye!"

In her statement to the court, Brenneke was not happy with the disposition of the case but said she had agreed to the plea bargain for the sake of her family.

"I did not want this deal. My mother and father and those children deserve to bury her, though. Jacque was in heaven the second you killed her. I personally did not need that," Brenneke said of burying her sister's body. "I needed you to suffer the rest of your life, is what I needed, but I loved them enough to give them what they needed."

Brenneke used much of her statement to address Clay Waller directly.

"Was it worth it, Clay? Does she haunt you? Do you see it? Do you see the light going out of her eyes?" she asked, her voice rising with emotion. "... Do you see it over and over? I pray that you do."

Brenneke told Clay Waller the last year of his wife's life -- after she left him and began planning her life with a new boyfriend -- was the happiest.

"He loved her and cherished her," she said. "He treated her with the respect she deserved, and not like her paycheck or a pawn in his game."

Stan and Ruby Rawson sit behind Clay Waller Thursday, June 6, 2013, inside the Cape Girardeau County Courthouse. Waller pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the death of the Rawson's daughter, Jacque Waller. Jacque Waller went missing June 1, 2011. Her body was found last Wednesday in Southern Illinois. (Laura Simon)

Clay and Jacque Waller had triplets together. In a diary recovered from a laptop computer found in her abandoned SUV, Jacque Waller stated that Clay Waller had threatened to kill her if she divorced him and had threatened to kill the children just to hurt her. In the diary, she expressed fear that Waller would kill her if she left, but Brenneke said his threats against the children were the last straw.

"She said she would rather be dead than to live and be married to you," Brenneke said.

Look for more stories on today's hearing and previous developments in the case at www.semissourian.com/wallercase.