Man who chopped up wife and threw her in garbage gets 10 years for manslaughter

February 7, 2018 By Paul Frangipane Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Phillip Martin next to his attorney, David Walensky as his victim’s family gave speech after speech at his sentencing. Eagle photo by Paul Frangipane

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A Brooklyn man who admitted to killing his wife and waiting a week before chopping her up and throwing her out was forced to face four tear-filled speeches from his victim’s family members before he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Wednesday.

Despite Phillip Martin previously told detectives he killed his wife Diana Rodriguez sometime around his birthday in January 2017, and then kept the body in his living room before cutting it up and discarding it. The body was never found. Without the proper evidence, he was able to cop to manslaughter.

“You admitted you killed her,” Rodriguez’s aunt, Alba Reyes, told Martin in court. She added, “[He] threw her out like she was garbage. Who does that?”

Reyes and other family members said they would have preferred a longer sentence for the man they called “the coward.”

“Unfortunately Phillip, you made sure there was nothing left to be found,” Reyes said.

Speech after speech, four relatives’ testimonies were accompanied by the family’s sobs in the court audience and Martin hanging his head.

“It feels to me that the defendant has more rights than the [deceased],” Rodriguez’s cousin said about the sentence. “I can’t begin to imagine the betrayal she must have felt when she knew she was dying.”

Martin, 43, responded to the family with a choked up voice and red eyes.

“I’d give anything to take it all back,” he said. “This will haunt me till the day I die. I’m sorry.”

Rodriguez, 43 when she died, went missing in February 2017, sparking a search by her relatives, who have attended every court date since. They eventually called 911 and reported her missing.

When Martin was arrested on Feb. 16, 2017, he admitted to killing his wife on an unknown date around his birthday.

He was originally charged with second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse, in addition to the manslaughter charge.

When asked why Martin waited a week to dismember his wife, his attorney, David Walensky previously told the Brooklyn Eagle he was in “terrible remorse and depression.”

Supreme Court Justice Miriam Cyrulnik told Martin she hopes he thinks about Rodriguez every day of his sentence.