Convicted murderer Michelle Boat says she was "despondent" after her husband left her during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. When he moved in with a new woman, Boat stabbed the woman to death. She blamed the killing on pandemic stress.
A convicted killer put forward a unique defense while on trial for the murder of her estranged husband’s new girlfriend. Michelle Boat of Iowa blamed stress spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic for making her snap.
Last March, Boat’s husband of 20 years left her and moved in with another woman, Tracy Mondabough. Boat kept a calendar showing every day her husband was gone. Boat also left a threatening warning on her husband’s phone.
“Tell the b**** that you’re sleeping with, she messed with the wrong momma,” Boat says in the message.
Prosecutors say last May, Boat followed Mondabough as she drove to a Burger King in a red pickup truck and bought a meal for herself and boyfriend.
As Mondabough and Boat’s estranged husband were sitting in the pickup truck, eating their lunch, Boat saw them kiss. She followed Mondabough home, got out of her car and stabbed her to death.
Grim police bodycam footage shows the moment when police found Mondabough slain, still wearing her seat belt.
Cops went right to Boat’s home to arrest her. At her trial she said she suffered from intense loneliness and pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Boat said during her trial that she felt “heartbroken, sad, despondent, devastated, destroyed,” when her husband left.
But the jury did not buy the defense and found Michelle Boat guilty of murder in the first degree.
“She was able to turn her emotions on and off like a spigot at a sink. She, quite frankly, was not convincing,” prosecutor Ed Bull told Inside Edition.
Boat faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
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