Wife will face trial in Delta slaying

FILLMORE — Carole Elizabeth Alden will go to trial for shooting her husband to death one hot summer night last July.

The mother of five has admitted she did it — that she shot her drunken husband as he raised his hand to strike her in their trailer home four miles southeast of Delta.

Gruesome details of the case that startled quiet Millard County were revealed Monday as prosecutors laid out their evidence at the preliminary hearing before 4th District Court Judge Donald Eyre.

Martin Sessions was found dead in the back yard of the couple's residence next to an old fish pond that Alden apparently dug out to use as a grave.

"At the end of the day, this woman bought a gun and executed her husband," said Patrick Nolan, a Utah assistant attorney general.

After the daylong hearing, Eyre agreed there was enough evidence to make Alden stand trial for domestic violence murder, a first-degree felony, and also obstruction of justice, a second-degree felony, and desecration of a body, a third-degree felony.

The two-week trial is set to begin June 6.

During the hearing, Alden's attorney, James Slavens, also outlined his strategy for her defense that will rely on the so-called "battered spouse" syndrome.

Throughout the hearing, and often at the objection of prosecutors, Slavens worked in details about prior 911 emergency calls to the couple's home and a recording that may show Sessions threatening Alden if she should ever contact police.

There is no argument that Alden repeatedly told officers she was scared for her life the night of July 28.

One by one, Millard County Sheriff's Department officials relayed events and observations from that night.

Alden told investigators she and her husband had been "having a difficult time," but were supposed to do something together that day — but Sessions decided to go out drinking with his friends instead. Alden went out looking for her husband and eventually brought him home with the help of friends.

In a videotaped interview, she told Sgt. Morris Burton that Sessions was in a drunken rage when the couple got back home. The man had passed out on the floor for a time, but when he woke up, he began making threats, punching the wall, throwing things and tearing apart the bathroom and bedroom.

After going from room to room to hide from him, she finally turned out the lights in the kitchen of the trailer so her husband couldn't see her, Burton testified.