MURDER accused Klaus Daniels, who was convicted of manslaughter in the killing of his lover Stacy Ann Thomas in 2008, was sentenced to 17 years imprisonment on Thursday last by Justice Winston Patterson. He had wounded the 20-year old girl 35 times, causing her death in 2008, and was considered lucky by many to have the State accept his  plea of not guilty to murder and guilty of manslaughter.
Because of a hitherto clean record, he was jailed for 17 years – with the court taking into account that he was provoked, did not waste the court’s time and had showed remorse for the killing.
The girl, Stacy Anne Thomas, now dead, was living with her grandmother at Lot 447 East Ruimveldt Back Circle.
On the day in question, at around 7:30 hrs. Daniels went to Stacy Ann’s home, they spoke, she got dressed and informed her grandmother that Klaus was taking her home with him.

When Daniels and Stacy Ann left that morning, they were holding hands, the court was told by the prosecution.
Daniels and Stacy Ann went to his brother’s apartment at Cowan and Duke Streets, Kingston. At that time, Dianne Smith, who usually visited her 77-year-old uncle, who lived upstairs, was at the side of the house cleaning fish when she heard a female voice screaming apparently from the downstairs apartment but even though she checked twice she said she saw nothing.
When she was finished cleaning the fish and returned upstairs, as a result of what her uncle told her, she sat on the front verandah facing Duke Street, when she saw Shem Munroe arrive in a car with a friend. Munroe went inside the apartment and within seconds, he came out back and he was crying. Smith’s uncle spoke with Munroe and as a result, she and her uncle went downstairs where she saw a female lying in a pool of blood. That person was Stacy Ann Thomas.
The judge was told that there was no eyewitness to what occurred within those walls between Daniels and Stacy Ann, nor did anyone see Daniels entering or leaving that premises. Following his arrest, state prosecutor Mrs. Judith Gildharie-Mursalin said that Daniels told the police under caution:
“Stacey was my girlfriend and I love she bad but sometime in October last year she started being unfaithful.”
The accused had said that on March 13, 2008, he visited her at her home and asked her why she was playing games with him but she did not reply. The following day, he returned to her home and she asked him to give her back a CD pouch and some other stuff she had given him. As a result, they left and went to his apartment in Kingston.
Mrs.  Gildharie-Mursalin, in narrating the facts of the case, told the court that what occurred on the day in question in that apartment between Daniels and Stacy Ann is to be gleaned from a written statement given to the police by Daniels in which he claimed that when they arrived at his apartment, Stacey Ann put some tea to hot in the microwave while he changed his clothing, after which they began talking.
Daniels told her that the ‘Rastaman’ she was having a relationship with was not a good man and that he (Daniels) was better than him.
Daniels told Stacy Ann that he was going to call his new girl friend, Monique, and when he went to pick up the phone, Stacy Ann grabbed hold of the phone, picked up an ice-pick and a fight ensued between them.
Daniels claimed he took away the ice pick from her and during the fight he fell into a chair and Stacy Ann fell on top of him and said, ‘Aaah’…like if she got bore.”
Daniels claimed he told her to stop but she left and went into the kitchen and returned with a knife. By that time, he had thrown the ice-pick away in the house. He and Stacy Ann continued fighting over the knife. He claimed he got the knife away from her but during the fight, she was stabbed again.
Three days after her death, Dr. Nehaul Singh performed an autopsy and his findings were very telling of the rain of injuries that were inflicted on her that day.
Singh found that Stacy Ann had 35 wounds, 27 of which were caused by a sharp, pointed, circular instrument, while the other eight were incised wounds to her neck caused by a sharp, pointed instrument. Nine of the circular wounds were found to the right side of the top of her head, passing through her skull into her brain.
Dr. Singh gave the cause of death as haemorrhage and shock due to multiple puncture and stab wounds.
Thomas was 18 years old at the time of her death.
Daniels was born in 1985, attended GTI, Occupation, Mechanic. He was 23 years old at the time of the incident in 2008. Defence counsel Mr. Nigel Hughes had made a stirring plea for leniency for his client whom he said, because of jealousy, had become temporarily insane.