(KWAT – Watertown, SD) A Watertown High School graduate will spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole for killing his wife last year.
Thirty two year-old Spencer Moen of West Fargo was sentenced Monday in Cass County (North Dakota) District Court.
A 12-person jury convicted him of murder in October.
Authorities found Moen’s wife Sonja, also a Watertown native, unresponsive in the bathtub of the couple’s West Fargo home on August 10, 2023.
She was on her back, fully clothed, with significant bruising on the left side of her face and forehead, both eyes appeared to be swollen shut, and there was dried blood on the right corner of her mouth. She also had bruising on her hands, which were indicative of defensive wounds, and had at least one fractured rib.
Spencer Moen told police both he and Sonja were intoxicated when they got home from the Mapleton, North Dakota golf course the night before he called police. He told investigators Sonja tripped coming up the steps from the garage into the house, and, “face planted.”
He said they later fought, and that he punched Sonja in the face with a closed fist three or four times because she had been punching him.
An autopsy on Sonja Moen indicated she sustained a subdural hematoma, and died from blunt force trauma to her head. She also had at least one fractured rib.
