Wendi Andriano is a woman from Arizona who was sentenced to death for the murder of her husband.
Wendi Andriano was not happy that her husband was chronically ill and unable to work so she began a plan to murder him. Andriano would begin by taking out a number of life insurance policies on her husband then began to slowly over medicate him
On the day of the murder Wendi Andriano would call 911 and say that her husband was having a heart attack however when the ambulance arrived she would turn them away. Wendi Andriano would then fatally beat her husband and stabbed him multiple times in the neck
Wendi Andriano would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.
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Wendi Andriano Convicted Of Murder
A 34-year-old Ahwatukee Foothills woman was convicted Thursday of poisoning, beating and stabbing her terminally ill husband to death in October 2000 and now faces the possibility of the death penalty.
If sentenced to death, Wendi Andriano would become the second woman on Arizona’s death row. Jurors, who took 2 1 /2 hours to return their verdict, will begin hearing evidence in the penalty phase Monday in Maricopa County Superior Court.
After the guilty verdict was announced, Andriano glanced sharply at defense attorney David DeLozier. Her husband’s parents and two sisters, one of whom is raising the couple’s two small children, cried quietly and exchanged hugs.
“This is a relief for us because now we can get on with our life, and the children can get on with their life and have the normal family life they deserve,” said Jeanea Lambeth, one of the sisters.
Jurors were told Andriano grew tired of the time it was taking Joseph Andriano, 33, to die and devised a plan to poison him with the pesticide sodium azide. Prosecutor Juan Martinez said Wendi Andriano believed she could receive as much as $20 million if her husband died before their medical malpractice suit went to trial.
Not only did Wendi Andriano have two affairs in the weeks before her husband’s death, but she called multiple insurance companies in an attempt to get policies on her husband, Martinez said. She also asked two men to impersonate Joseph Andriano during the required physical exams — offering one of them $10,000 to do so, the prosecutor said.
Wendi Andriano’s attorneys, DeLozier and Dan Patterson, painted her as a meek and battered wife desperate for affection.
Andriano testified that her husband was the one who devised a plan that would end his life on his terms and provide life insurance for their two children, Nicholas, then 3, and Ashley, then 2. It was at his insistence, she claimed, that she purchased the insecticide under a false name and tried to purchase extra life insurance.
Wendi Andriano said that on the day of her husband’s death he voluntarily took the poison in pill form and stabbed himself in the neck after learning she had a one-night stand. She said she beat her enraged husband repeatedly with a bar stool in self-defense.
According to court testimony, Joseph Andriano was struck in the head 23 times and the pesticide was found in a pot of soup and two bowls.
Wendi Andriano faces either life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years, life without parole, or the death penalty. She could receive the death penalty if the jury finds the slaying was especially cruel, heinous and depraved and because the motivating factor was money.
If given the death penalty, Andriano will join Debra Milke on death row. Milke was convicted of hiring two friends to shoot her 4-year-old son to death in December 1989 because she didn’t want him to grow up to be like his father. The boy went with the men believing he was going to visit Santa Claus
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As political and legal maneuvering ramps up on whether executions should resume for 111 Arizona inmates, a former Ahwatukee woman won’t be worrying for a while on whether a death warrant will be issued for her.
Three days before Christmas 2004, a jury concluded a 17-week trial in Maricopa County Superior Court by condemning Wendi Andriano to death for the brutal slaying of her husband, Joseph Andriano Jr.
It took the jury only eight hours to put Andriano on Arizona’s death row, where she remains one of only three female inmates facing execution.
But Andriano is among 86 death row inmates whose appeals of their ultimate punishment remain unresolved.
Records show that her appeal of her death sentence has been bouncing between federal and state courts for 20 years – and apparently could continue for a while.
Last April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District ordered that her case be returned to Maricopa County Superior Court for a post-conviction hearing “for relief from her death sentence.”
Her sentence has been stalled by appeals, the general stay on executions that Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered in 2023 to allow for a review of the state’s lethal injection process and by a U.S. Supreme Court case involving an unrelated death row inmate.
Hobbs late last year cleared the decks for the resumption of executions and one man on death row wants his carried out as soon as possible.
But a February 2023 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court could give Andriano an out from the sentence imposed on her for a particularly brutal, cold-hearted killing.
In that ruling, the high court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the jury that sentenced former Pima County resident John Cruz to death for killing a Tucson police officer should have been first told he would never be paroled if he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
That throws into question whether the jury rightfully sentenced Wendi Andriano to death for trying to poison her terminally ill 33-year-old husband on Oct. 8, 2000, in their San Rivas apartment in Ahwatukee and, when then didn’t work, striking him 23 times in the back of his head before plunging a 13-inch knife into his neck.
n lengthy filings in federal court, lawyers described Andriano as a “dysfunctional” woman who “was not mentally and emotionally equipped to handle the physical, emotional, sexual, and religious trauma inflicted upon her throughout her life.”
Born in Groom, Texas, to a couple who divorced when she was 3, her childhood was spent in nearly constant turmoil, her lawyers said.
Her father was a drunk and an abuser and her 20-year-old mother “tried to repair their marriage by having a baby.”
But because she had Wendi rather than a boy, the marriage continued to spiral out of control so that Andriano’s “first few years of life were filled with constant fighting between her parents.
“Exposure to her parents’ aggression and trauma would profoundly interfere with her ability to regulate her emotions later in life,” her lawyers continued.
“The dysfunction Wendi was exposed to was not isolated to just her parents, but was pervasive throughout her extended family,” they said, noting that her grandfather and an uncle were eventually imprisoned for child molestation and that Andriano was often left alone with them.
Her mother eventually divorced and married a man who had been part of a rigid Christian cult in California that did not believe in medical treatment because they believed God would heal them when they were sick.
Her mother and stepfather in 1976 took Andriano out of school when she was 7 when they formed a traveling ministry called Fishers of Men.
As part of a sect where women were considered subservient to men, “Wendi was completely immersed in this religious experience.
“She lived in a converted bus, was isolated, and was homeschooled by the subservient women in the group. Wendi panhandled because they lived in extreme poverty, and she had daily chores and construction projects.”
One of the cult’s leaders also sexually abused Andriano, and so her parents left the California cult and moved to Casa Grande – where they joined another rigid Christian sect called the 91st Psalms Church.
“The congregation at 91st Psalms had the same religious convictions as the Fishers of Men,” her lawyers wrote. “Wendi’s parents may have left Fishers of Men behind, but they did not leave their religious practices.”
Andriano eventually began going to a Christian school, did some missionary work in Mexico before returning to Casa Grande, took some community college courses and got her own apartment and a job.
At age 21 at a bar on St. Patrick’s Day in 1992, she met Joe Andriano Jr.
Her appellate court papers lay out the stark nature of their marriage:
“Within weeks of Wendi meeting Joe, Joe moved in with Wendi. Family members witnessed Joe being physically abusive towards Wendi and asked her to slow down, but she decided to marry Joe anyway in January 1994.
“Despite the verbal and physical abuse Joe inflicted on Wendi prior to their marriage, Wendi’s only reservation about marrying Joe had to do with the fact that he was not a Christian man. … At the time, Wendi was not concerned about the abuse because in her eyes Joe was not any different than her father.”
Joe controlled the family finances even though “he worked inconsistently,” isolated Wendi from her friends and family and made her a virtual personal slave in their home, her lawyers said.
The couple also was broke most of the time and “the financial stress became so overwhelming” that she stole $2,000 from her employer in 1996 and lost her job.
She became pregnant with the first of their two children the following year and “they had no income at all.”
Joe eventually became a partner in a glass-repair business but that ended when he embezzled some money and threatened to kill his partner.
During frequent violent outbursts by her husband, “Wendi would run and hide in another room like she did” with her parents. But, “Joe would follow Wendi” and “would scream and put holes in the door, attempting to get to her.”
She attempted to take their son and leave him, but agreed to stay and only six months after giving birth to her son, became pregnant with their daughter. During that pregnancy, Joe was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that had spread to his lungs.
It eventually turned out that Joe had been misdiagnosed and, as a result, underwent four highly invasive surgeries.
Wendi’s lawyers said she suffered from severe post-partum depression exacerbated by the couple’s financial stress, worries about her husband’s terminal illness and physical complications from getting pregnant so soon after her first child was born.
The couple had joined a church that believed in faith-based healing and for a while, Joe believed his cancer had been eradicated.
“However, towards the end of 1999, Joe’s pain came back,” Wendi’s lawyers asserted. “He went back to the doctor and learned that the tumor had not disappeared—in fact, it had doubled in size. Joe was angry with Wendi for causing him to believe that God would heal him. He blamed Wendi for giving him false hope and he quit attending” church.
In November 1999, Wendi became manager of the San Rivas Apartments.
“Wendi continued to self-medicate by drinking alcohol and trying to maneuver through her life with an underdeveloped moral compass.”
And her behavior ran directly counter to her earlier strict religious upbringing, her lawyers said.
Opinions filed over time by the trial court judge, state Supreme Court and U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton all upheld Andriano’s first degree murder conviction and death sentence. They agreed with prosecutors’ arguments that portrayed her in a starkly different light from the long-suffering wife her lawyers describe her as.
Prior to the murder, she had begun to drink excessively and frequent bars, where “she was seen dancing and flirting and even groping and kissing men,” the state high court noted.
During the summer of 2000, she began an affair with a man who lived in the San Rivas complex, but he eventually rejected her when he learned she was married with children.
Andriano “aggressively pursued” him despite that rejection. On one occasion, she banged repeatedly on his apartment door in the middle of the night and threatened to get a “pass key” if he didn’t let her in.
Andriano also on two occasions in 2000 tried to take out a $50,000 life insurance policy on her husband, and lied to the insurance companies about her husband’s condition – which by then had been deemed terminally ill.
“She also asked two men to pose as Joe for a life insurance physical exam, one of whom she offered to pay as much as $50,000,” the state high court noted. “Both refused. No life insurance policy was ever obtained through these efforts.”
On Oct. 7, 2000, the couple returned home just before midnight with their two children, both under 5 years old, from a barbecue.
Joe’s final hours began ticking down.
At 2:15 a.m. Oct. 8, Andriano called a coworker named Chris at the apartment complex and asked if he would come over to watch the kids while she took Joe to the doctor.
“When Chris arrived, Andriano met her outside the apartment,” the state Supreme Court opinion recalled. “She told Chris, ‘I have a problem. Don’t ask any questions. My husband’s in on the floor dying and I haven’t called 911 yet.’
“When Andriano cautioned, ‘He doesn’t know I haven’t called 911,’ Chris urged her to make the call. Upon entering the apartment, Chris found Joe lying on the living room floor in the fetal position… While Andriano was in another room calling 911, Joe told Chris that he needed help and had (needed help) ‘for a long time.’”
When the paramedics arrived, the opinion noted, “Andriano came out of the apartment screaming at them to go away. She then slammed the door. Chris and four paramedics knocked on the apartment door but no one answered.”
Phoenix Fire telephoned her and though she said she would come to the door, she left from a rear exit, climbed over a patio wall and went around to where the paramedics were waiting.
“Andriano had changed her shirt and her hair was wet,” the court said. “She told paramedics that Joe was dying of cancer and had a do-not-resuscitate order. She explained that ‘this was not the way he wanted to go.’ The paramedics and Chris left without going into the apartment.”
Less than two hours later, Andriano called 911 again and the same paramedics returned. This time, Andriano was outside talking to police and wearing a bloody shirt.
“When the paramedics entered the apartment, they found Joe lying on the floor in a pool of blood,” the court noted. “He had a deep stab wound to the left side of his neck and lacerations on his head that exposed some brain matter. A police detective observed at 3:52 a.m. that the blood surrounding Joe’s head was already starting to dry.
“A broken bar stool covered in blood was found near Joe’s body, as were pieces of a lamp, a kitchen knife with blood on the sharp edge, a bloody pillow, and a belt.”
The medical examiner’s office determined that Joe “was conscious for at least part of the attack” as he lay on the floor and took 23 blows to his skull from the bar stool.
At trial, Andriano testified she had tried to assist in Joe’s suicide with the poison and that after that failed, they got into a fight. She said she hit him with the bar stool in self defense. She also claimed he had inflicted the stab wound in the neck that was so deep it hit his spinal cord.
The jury found one aggravating circumstance in rendering its death verdict:
The murder was “especially cruel.”
The prosecution asserted, in part, that Andriano was looking for a $20 million payout from a lawsuit over Joe’s misdiagnosis.
Prosecutor Juan Martinez also asserted that Andriano had tired of caring for her husband and could no longer wait for him to die, even though it was estimated he had only about a year or so left.
During her nine days on the witness stand, Andriano said her husband became enraged when she confessed to being unfaithful, and she fought him off. She said he grabbed the knife to stick himself in the neck, which she tried to prevent, but she lost her grip and he stabbed himself.
Her lawyers on appeal have cited over two dozen legal and procedural issues in arguing for a new trial and dismissal of the death sentence.
Among them is that her trial lawyer was not only inexperienced but also was encountering no small number of personal problems: He had not eaten solid food for 70 days of the trial; his father was dying; and a fellow lawyer involved in the case had been murdered during the course of Andriano’s trial. Consequently, he “never fully regained his ability to focus.”
Her lawyers also argued that the trial judge forced the jury to continue deliberating the penalty even though the panel said it was deadlocked.
Furthermore, they cited a newspaper story, based on juror interviews, that said one juror was adamantly opposed to the death penalty and was coerced into voting for death.
But the Arizona Supreme Court rejected all these arguments, noting that the jury had only asked what would happen if it was deadlocked and that the judge simply urged them to isolate their points of disagreement and carefully discuss them.
The high court also rejected arguments that the mitigating circumstances presented at trial argued against a death sentence.
Among them those circumstances were her assertions of domestic violence.
The court ruled, “Joe posed no threat at the time of the attack because he was so weak from the poison and chemotherapy that he could not get up.”
The court also dismissed evidence of her childhood and teen years, calling it “remote in time to the offense.”
And it rejected assertions she was a good mother, noting, it had “minimal value in light of the fact that Andriano murdered her children’s father while the children were present in the apartment.”
Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled, “The quality and strength of Andriano’s mitigation evidence is not sufficiently substantial to call for leniency in light of the especially cruel manner in which Andriano murdered her husband.”
