New York – A New York finance executive pleaded not guilty to murder on Tuesday in the slaying of his pediatrician wife, who was stabbed 22 times with a kitchen knife as she showered in their suburban Scarsdale home, authorities said.
Jules Reich, 62, who at the time of the Jan. 20 crime was listed as a partner at Manhattan based-accounting firm WeiserMazars on its website, was arraigned on an indictment for second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
“In what can only be described as an ambush, the defendant entered the bathroom while his wife was showering and repeatedly stabbed her to death,” acting Westchester County District Attorney James McCarty said in a statement.
An 8-inch kitchen knife was used in the attack on Robin Goldman, 58, who worked as a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx borough of New York City.
The killing was the first in upscale Scarsdale in nearly 40 years. The village of about 17,000 in New York City’s northern suburbs has an average annual family income of more than $290,000.
The couple was in the middle of a divorce proceeding but was living in the same residence, a multimillion-dollar home 20 miles (30 km) north of New York City, the prosecutor said.
After the murder, a judge signed orders of protection for the couple’s three adult children.
“Reich stabbed the victim 22 times resulting in wounds to the hands, chest, abdomen and back,” McCarty said.
“She suffered punctures to her lung, heart, diaphragm, liver and kidney. She died at the scene.”
After the attack, Reich went downstairs and called 911, prosecutors said.
Reich, who wore a suit to his arraignment in Westchester County Court in White Plains, is due back in court on April 5, said Robert Wolf, a Westchester County District Attorney spokesman.
If convicted of the murder charge, he faces up to 25 years to life in prison.
An attorney for Reich, Kerry Lawrence of White Plains, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
