A 75-year-old Philadelphia man has been ordered held for trial on charges he killed his 74-year-old wife and tried to blame the crime on an innocent neighbor.
At a preliminary hearing Tuesday, prosecutors said Louis Hartdegen confessed to strangling his wife of 52 years, staging their apartment to make it look like a burglary and rape, and telling authorities that a neighbor did it.
Investigators said Hartdegen admitted killing Judith Hartdegen on May 6 after an earlier argument over missing rent money escalated into a violent confrontation.
Defense attorney Thurgood Matthews tried to show that Hartdegen is too frail to kill anyone. Hartdegen is in a wheelchair but prosecutors say he was able to walk at the time of the killing and has lost weight since his arrest.
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