Waller pleads guilty; deal calls for 35-year sentence

Convicted murderer James Clay Waller II will serve a 35-year prison sentence on a federal charge stemming from the 2011 murder of his estranged wife under terms of a plea agreement, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

If approved by the court, the sentence would run concurrent to a 20-year sentence he is serving after pleading guilty in state court in 2013 to second-degree murder in the death of estranged wife, Jacque Waller, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Clay Waller, 45, pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in St. Louis to one felony count of interstate domestic violence, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office news release.

Waller admitted to U.S. District Judge Audrey Fleissig he had threatened on numerous occasions to kill his wife if she divorced him, the release stated.

Waller strangled and beat his wife to death June 1, 2011, in Jackson after they met with a divorce attorney, prosecutors said. He then transported her body across the Mississippi River by boat to Illinois, where he buried her in the grave he dug the previous day.

As part of the plea agreement, Waller agreed to forfeit any proceeds that might occur from “any contract relating to a depiction of his crime in a movie, book, newspaper, magazine, radio or television production,” the release stated.

That would include a manuscript written by Waller and titled, “If You Take My Kids, I’ll Kill You!: The Public Confession of Missouri’s Most Notorious Wife Killers,” the release stated.

Federal prosecutors said in a previous court filing the federal charge was brought against Waller “to protect citizens from a dangerous, sociopathic and narcissistic murderer.”

Sentencing has been set for Jan. 16.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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