A retrial begins Monday for a man once convicted of murdering his wife, tossing her into the bed of his pickup truck, and driving to Virginia to drop off their children before turning himself in to police.
A DeKalb County jury convicted Dennis Allaben for murder in 2011, but the Georgia Supreme Court threw out his conviction two years later. The justices said in 2011 that Allaben could not be found guilty both of reckless conduct and murder because the jury had to find there was no intent to kill her to convict him of reckless conduct, while murder is intentional.
Jury selection begins exactly three years after he was convicted of strangling Maureen Allaben, an effervescent set designer for "The Mo'Nique Show" on BET and a well-known food stylist who prepared displays in advertising photographs.
Dennis Allaben admitted killing her, but he claimed it was an accident. He said he lost control of his emotions because she was trying to poison him and was monitoring his movements on GPS and computer, claims that were never proven.
According to testimony in the first trial, on Jan. 3, 2010, Dennis Allaben put his wife's body, swaddled in a packing blanket, in the bed of his truck and drove to Virginia to leave his son, then 7, and daughter, then 8, with relatives.
While in Virginia, Dennis Allaben told his sister-in-law that he had killed his wife, Jill Allaben testified.
He also told his children he had killed their mother, according to testimony by the sister-in-law in the August 2011 trial.
Two days after his wife’s death, Dennis Allaben returned to Georgia and drove directly to a friend’s home in Clayton County. He told a Clayton police officer who lived two doors from the friend that he had killed his wife and she was in his truck. By then, Maureen Allaben’s body was frozen, having been outside in the cold for two days.
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