Man Gets Life Sentence for 1987 Murder of Wife

Eleven years after he tortured, then shot his wife to death so he wouldn’t lose her assets in a divorce, Guy Bouck was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for her murder.

It was a “wonderful” day, in her brother’s words, marking a hard-won victory.

“We have spent 11 years of our lives working, waiting and hoping to get to this day,” said Jack Shine, Stephanie Bouck’s brother. “We were determined that justice would prevail.”

Guy Bouck, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was arrested days after Stephanie Bouck was found dead in their Canyon Country home Jan. 3, 1987.

But the district attorney’s office declined to file murder charges, telling sheriff’s detectives that they did not have enough evidence. No murder weapon was found, there were no witnesses to the crime, and Bouck had an alibi.

He was set free Jan. 7, 1987.

Afraid that his sister’s death might never be avenged, Shine, the Encino developer of American Beauty Homes, blocked Bouck’s claims to her $180,000 estate and life insurance policy. He spent $850,000 on a civil action that eventually found that Bouck probably killed her.

New evidence unearthed in the probate case, including a revised time of death and statements from his alibi, led to Bouck’s criminal prosecution three years ago.

In November, Bouck pleaded guilty to his wife’s murder in a deal to avoid the death penalty.

In an attempt to avoid a life setence, he would not admit to the special circumstances alleged by the prosecution: lying in wait, murder for financial gain, torture and sexual assault.

In a trial last month, Superior Court Judge L. Jeffrey Wiatt found that all but the sexual assault occurred.

“A great burden has been lifted from us, and we hope now to go forward with our lives with the knowledge that Guy Bouck will never leave prison alive,” Shine told the Van Nuys court in a prepared statement Thursday. “His fate is in God’s hands and in the hands of his fellow inmates.”

Despite his guilty plea, Bouck has denied killing his wife and has said that one day the murder weapon with the murderer’s fingerprints will turn up and absolve him.

“The only reason I accepted this deal is with the hope that the person responsible will be caught and convicted,” Bouck, 47, told Wiatt on Thursday. “I don’t know what to do, your honor. I’m innocent.”

Even his daughter doesn’t believe him. “You killed her, no one else,” Treena Young, 24, said to Bouck in her statement to the court Thursday. “You took away the only person in my world who ever took the time to talk to me,” she said, referring to her stepmother, Stephanie Bouck. “I am disgusted by you.”