GUILTY CA - Lynn Schockner, 50, stabbed to death, Long Beach, 8 Nov 2004

The Bixby Knolls millionaire who ordered his wife's murder three years ago was called insatiably greedy and "a disgusting human being" on Thursday before being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Long Beach Superior Court Judge Gary Ferrari delivered the sentence - and the biting remarks - to a frail-looking but defiant Manfred Schockner, convicted in September of planning the 2004 murder-for-hire of his estranged wife, Lynn, 50. Evidence during the trial showed that the defendant had feared losing half of his $7-million fortune in the couple's pending divorce.

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Manfred Schockner, the victim’s estranged husband, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for masterminding a plot and enlisting help from Frankie Jaramillo, an acquaintance from a local gym. He paid $50,000 to Jaramillo, who then hired Nicholas Harvey, a steroid-addicted bodybuilder from Port Hueneme, to do the job for $5,000.

Harvey was caught, moments after the murder, fleeing the Schockners’ yard. But it took wiretaps, phone records, bank statements, undercover surveillance videos and the use of police decoys to make a definitive connection between Schockner and the killer.

Jaramillo and Harvey were both convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

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