Jury Convicts Woman for Tossing Husband’s Penis in the Garbage Disposal

Earlier on Monday, a jury in Santa Ana, Calif. convicted Catherine Kieu of torture and aggravated mayhem for severing her estranged husband’s penis and tossing it in the garbage disposal (the pit of cringes, for all those cinephiles who sat through Final Destination 2) back on July 11, 2011.

Kieu’s trial featured no end of cringe-worthy moments, including the horrifying revelation from Deputy District Attorney John Christl that the entire penis-severing incident was captured on a voice-activated recorder that Kieu had hidden in her bedroom. (Think the Timothy Treadwell audio tape only without Werner Herzog’s mercifully strange sense of discretion.) According to Christl, Kieu was motivated by a mixture of “vengeance, vanity, and jealousy” after learning of her husband’s plans to divorce her because he’d started seeing an ex-girlfriend.

The AP summarized the courtroom proceedings with grim concision:

During trial, the 60-year-old victim testified that his penis could not be reattached and that he felt as though he had been murdered.

Christl told jurors that Kieu, 50, drugged the man’s tofu with sleeping pills and screamed “You deserve it!” before attacking him with a 10-inch kitchen knife.

According to the AP report, Kieu’s public defender Frank Bittar claimed that she suffered mental problems stemming from a childhood of molestation “and other trauma in war-torn Vietnam.” Sentencing was scheduled for June 28.