Mark Jensen, Pleasant Prairie man found guilty again of killing wife, to be sentenced Friday

The Pleasant Prairie man found guilty for the second time earlier this year of poisoning and suffocating his wife to death in 1998 will be sentenced Friday.

Mark Jensen, who faces life in prison, will be sentenced by Judge Anthony Milisauskas. Jensen remains in custody in the Kenosha County Jail. He’s been in custody since 2007. 

Jensen could be sentenced to life in prison with 20 years parole, life in prison with parole eligibility after 20 years or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A jury of six men and six women again found Jensen guilty in Kenosha County Circuit Court of first-degree intentional homicide on Feb. 1 in the high-profile retrial of the 63-year-old former stock broker. 

After nearly four weeks the jury found Jensen guilty of poisoning wife Julie Jensen with odorless ethylene glycol, more commonly known as antifreeze. Prosecutors said he then suffocated to death by turning her face down in their bed with Jensen sitting on top of her. She died early December 1998 inside the couple’s Carol Beach home.

Jensen was convicted in 2008 of the killing. However, a Kenosha County judge vacated Jensen’s conviction in April 2021 after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Jensen deserved a new trial.

The court found voicemails and a letter his wife wrote incriminating him in the event something should happen to her could not be used by the prosecution as it was in the first trial. In early 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court helped pave the way for the new trial when it declined to hear an appeal of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling.

The so-called “letter from the grave” in which Julie Jensen wrote that “if anything happens to me” that her husband “would be my first suspect” was not allowed into evidence during the lengthy second trial. The high-profile case has sparked headlines across the nation.

The retrial cost the county tens of thousands of dollars. 

It’s not clear if Jensen will speak during his sentencing hearing. He declined to speak in his defense during both trials and during his first sentencing. Judge Bruce Schroeder sentenced him to life in prison without parole in 2008. 

Special prosecutor Robert Jambois returned to help prosecute the case against Jensen. He was joined with co-counsel deputy district attorney Carli McNeil.

The defense team included public defenders Bridget Krause, Jeremy Perri and Mackenzie Renner.