Doctor Kills Wife with Cyanide

Yazeed Essa, a former emergency room doctor, was convicted of murdering his wife. INSIDE EDITION has the story.

He looks every inch a murderer...and he is. He poisoned his wife with cyanide. But it is stunning to learn that the cold-blooded killer is also a doctor.

This victim's mother was scathing about having to look at him during his trial.

She described it as, "Seven weeks looking at the devil in his eyes."

Doctor Yazeed Essa and his wife Rosemarie seemed to have a storybook marriage. They had two children, and he worked in a hospital emergency room.

The Essas lived in a stately home in an affluent suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. But all was not well on the home front. Essa was secretly living the life of a single man.

"He boasted one time, he wanted to see how many conquests, sexual conquests, of different women, he could have in a 24-hour period. Turns out the number was six," says WOIO reporter Paul Orlousky.

Suspicions were aroused when the playboy doctor's wife was found dead in her car after a traffic accident. It wasn't the crash that killed her...an autopsy showed she died of cyanide poisoning.

Her husband fled the country. But 18 months later he was captured in Cyprus and brought back to the United States to stand trial for murder.

His Casanova lifestyle was exposed during the trial. One ex-lover, Marguerita Montanez, testified their relationship had nothing to do with affection.

"He could care less if I slept with anyone else, and I could care less if he slept with anybody else," said Montanez.

The doctor tried in vain to pin his wife's murder on the ex-mistress, saying she wanted to be a physician's wife!

So how does she feel now about the man who tried to blame her for his crime?

"I despise him. I can't believe he has the nerve to look at me. He's despicable," she told the court.

His late wife's distraught family spoke at Essa's sentencing.

"He is a pitiful example of a human being," said Rosemarie's sister.

Now unshaven and wearing prison orange, he seemed to squirm in his seat as his brother-in-law turned to face him and challenged him to apologize.

"Are you man enough? Are you? It's your last chance to save your soul. Right here, right now."

But Essa said nothing during the sentencing.

"Is it your wish to remain silent?" asked the judge.

"Yes," said Essa.

The killer doctor was led away to begin serving a life sentence.

"He's an animal. He's gone and I hope I never see him again," Rosemarie's brother, Dominic DiPuccio, told INSIDE EDITION.