PAUL Gooden, the jealous obsessive convicted of murdering his wife in a sensational society crime, was yesterday sentenced to life in prison after being told by Justice Marva McIntosh that he had been “cruel and callous”.

“.You will have to suffer for your actions,” Justice McIntosh told Gooden, 39, as she pronounced sentence at the Home Circuit Court in Kingston.

“Your sentence is life imprisonment and you will be eligible for parole after 35 years.”

Gooden is the son of the well-known Jamaican opera singer, dramatist and broadcaster Pat Gooden, while his wife, Ingrid, who was killed a year ago, was the daughter of a retired Jamaican Director of Public Prosecutions, Glen Andrade.

Gooden, dressed in a grey suit and black tie, stood stony-faced and emotionless when the judge passed sentence. He had nothing to say.

Ingrid Andrade-Gooden was last seen alive on November 6 last year and her bruised body was found three days later in the mangroves along the Palisadoes Road in Kingston on the way to the capital’s Norman Manley airport. She was strangled.

Gooden told the police his wife had left home early on the morning on November 7, saying that she needed space, but an autopsy showed that her stomach had undigested food from the dinner the family had the night before.

Andrade-Gooden’s blood was also found in Gooden’s car.

However, it emerged in court that Gooden was an obsessive husband who sometimes spent time in the car park of his wife’s workplace and that his motive for killing his wife may have been because of her rejection and apparent affair.

The defence argued that it was someone other than Gooden who murdered his wife and suggested that it might have been a man with whom she appeared to have had a sexual affair and with whom she corresponded with electronically.

The defence, led by Lord Anthony Gifford, brought e-mail evidence of a number of Andrade-Gooden’s correspondence with males, and focused particularly on one which was signed Victor Hugo.

In one message to Victor Hugo, Andrade-Gooden said: “Think of me. Talk to me baby. I don’t have any regrets about you making love to me. Hope we will make love again.”

The prosecution suggested that Gooden knew about these messages and that other stresses in the marriage, coupled with his obsessive insecurity, drove Gooden to murder.

As she handed down the verdict, Justice McIntosh told Gooden that the facts of the case spoke for themselves and that he was not being convicted for any acts committed after the crime – an apparent allusion to his admittance during evidence of having lied to the police as well as other inconsistencies in his statements.

Pam Gooden had on her son’s conviction on Wednesday, insisted on his innocence and vowed to appeal the verdict. Yesterday one of Paul Gooden’s lawyers, Hugh Thompson, reiterated the intent to appeal and questioned the severity of the sentence.

“I find the sentence a bit harsh,” he said. “I am a bit surprised, having regard to the circumstances of the crime, especially the crime of passion aspect of it.”

Earlier, Lord Gifford had urged the judge to exercise leniency, saying that he had committed a crime of passion, motivated by jealousy, obsession and rejection.

“You are aware (that) while the mandatory sentence is life imprisonment, you have the discretion to order that the accused man serve a limited period of imprisonment before he is paroled,” Lord Gifford said. “. In considering what period should be imposed I ask that you take in consideration that there is no danger of the accused re-offending anyone.”

Added the defence lawyer: “He has lost liberty, good name and caused intense pain to his mother. But above all, he has lost his children that he will never see again…That is the worst punishment that could be visited on him.

Bearing in mind that under normal circumstances he has committed a crime tempered with jealousy… So I am asking Me Lady for a low sentence.”