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A 55-year-old Magna man pleaded guilty Monday to the 2008 stabbing death of his neighbor and former girlfriend.
Charles "Chuck" Richard Gunkel was charged with first-degree felony aggravated murder — a potential death-penalty offense — for stabbing 51-year-old Morena Molly Robbins five times in the abdomen on Aug. 8, 2008.
On Monday, Gunkel pleaded guilty in 3rd District Court to the homicide charge in exchange for a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Prosecutors also dismissed additional charges of first-degree felony aggravated burglary and third-degree felony aggravated assault.
Sentencing is set for July 7 before Judge William Barrett.
During a 2009 preliminary hearing, Robbins' daughter, 15-year-old Carly Robbins, testified Gunkel had stood on the front porch of her home and begged her mother not to marry another man.
Gunkel then broke through the locked screen door, pinned her mother to the bedroom floor and began choking her, the daughter testified.
The teen said Gunkel brandished a knife at her before she ran next door and called 911. But police and paramedics arrived too late to save her mother's life.
The victim — an elementary school teacher and the mother of five children — bled to death from wounds that penetrated her heart, aorta, liver and two major blood veins, according to an autopsy.
After the stabbing, Gunkel returned to his own home about a half-mile away, where he called his ex-wife and told her about the slaying. The knife was found in the bushes in front of Robbins' home.
According to other preliminary hearing testimony, Gunkel and Molly Robbins had been in an on-again, off-again relationship for about five years. About three weeks prior to the slaying, Gunkel learned Robbins was seeing someone else.
"Don't do this. Don't get married," Gunkel said to Molly Robbins before breaking open the door, according to Carly Robbins.
Moments later, the teen testified, Gunkel was on top of her mother, choking her with one hand and holding a pocket knife in the other. She said her mother was saying, "Chuck, please don't do this."
The girl testified that Gunkel ordered her into the bedroom and onto the bed. Before the girl fled the home, Gunkel pointed the knife at her and said, "Shut up or I'll cut you, too," she testified.
Prosecutors early on decided not to pursue the death penalty against Gunkel. Had the case gone to trial, the issue would have been life with or without the possibility of parole.