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Middlefield, Ohio Police Chief Joseph Stehlik said it was the strangest case he has ever investigated. A 41-y-o transgender woman pleaded guilty late last week to reckless homicide for exercising her 73-y-o husband to death. Christine Newton-John faces up to five years in prison when she is sentenced. Her husband, James Mason, suffered a heart attack after being forced to swim in the pool at the Middlefield Village apartment complex where they lived.
The whole thing might have been dismissed as a death by natural causes if a police officer hadn't noticed at surveillance camera positioned near the pool. When police viewed the tape they saw Newton-John refusing to let her frail husband out of the pool. Mason attempted to get out of the water 43 times.
Newton-John was born a male and named John Vallandingham. He underwent sex-change surgery in 1993 and changed his name to Christine Newton-John in honor of his favorite singer. In 2006, Newton-John and Mason married in Kentucky, a state that allows people to change the gender on their birth certificate. If that's not weird enough, Mason had been friends with the Vallandingham family since before his future wife was born. He lived in a boarding house operated by Newton-John's grandmother and for a time shared a bedroom with John Vallandingham.
So far, no comment from Olivia Newton-John.
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