Former supply officer for Navy SEALS gets 25 years in wife's murder

An ex-Navy officer who beat his wife to death after she threatened to expose his homosexual conduct with other men was sentenced to 25 years in prison yesterday for 1st degree murder. The 41 year old Michael Lee Everage was sentenced yesterday to the jury-recommended 25 years in prison for beating his wife Robyn to death.

Robyn was killed February 20, 2007, when Michael reported her missing from their Virginia Beach, VA home. Her body was found the next day, next to her SUV. She was 41 when she was murdered. Prosecutors said the motive was that Robyn threatened to expose her husband's gay affair after she learned that he had a second affair with her female friend. Robyn could accept the same sex conduct, but not so much the straight affair.

During a two-week trial in December, authorities said Everage beat his wife to death with a side-view truck mirror, loaded her body into her Toyota Sequoia and drove from their Norfolk home to Shore Drive. He parked the SUV along the shoulder and dragged her body into the woods, staging the scene to appear as if Robyn had gotten out of her vehicle and been hit by a passing truck.

A medical examiner testified she had been struck repeatedly in the back of the head.

Everage's sentencing hearing was delayed for months after his attorneys filed motions for a mistrial and for the judge to set aside the verdict. The motions followed a Virginian-Pilot article that revealed an inmate who testified Everage had confessed to him in jail also had offered to testify in other high-profile cases.

"It's like a dark cloud that never lifts," Robyn's mother, Karen Taylor, said. "I wish we could erase the month of February from the rest of our lives."

Speaking directly to Everage, Taylor said her daughter never would have disclosed his gay affair to Navy officials. Robyn felt betrayed, but she wouldn't have ruined her husband's career because doing so would have hurt their young daughter, as well as Everage's two sons from a previous marriage, her mother said. "She was killed for nothing."

Robyn's brother, Rod Taylor, also took the witness stand. He chastised Everage, describing him as a coward and a hypocrite for leading Bible study sessions in jail. "You lived a selfish life," he told Everage, "and the death of my sister was the ultimate selfish act."

The presiding judge in the case was Circuit Judge Stephen C. Mahan. Everage plans to appeal the conviction.