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Chiang Mai: A Canadian woman was sentenced to three and a half years in a Thai jail on Thursday for killing her American partner, who claimed be the 'reincarnation of Jesus Christ'.
Margaret Crane, 50, got two years for killing George Patrick Dubie, 56, after a quarrel at a restaurant in the northern city of Chiang Mai and one and a half years for possessing and carrying a pistol in public.
"The court views that the defendant committed the crime as charged, but did it in a rage after being provoked, pressured and beaten," Judge Thanakorn Pusayapaiboon said as he read out the verdict.
"Therefore the sentence is lower than what is stated in the law," he said, adding her confession helped halve the murder penalty to two years in jail.
Canadian newspapers described the pair as a 21st century "Bonnie and Clyde" - an American couple and gang notorious for their robberies on banks, small stores and gas stations in the central United States in the mid-1930s.
Their case has also exposed a shocking saga involving a charismatic American with a cult-like allure who, over three decades, duped dozens of people, seduced scores of women and allegedly abused children in at least three countries.
Brian Fujiuchi, a detective in Hawaii who investigated a cult Dubie ran in the 1980s, told the National Post Dubie brainwashed people into believing "he was Jesus Christ and were handing over their life savings."
Crane told the police after she was arrested that Dubie - who claimed to be a part-time CNN correspondent and to have worked for the United Nations in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami - was abusive and hit her and their six children.
Crane, who never married Dubie but travelled with him across Canada, to Hawaii and Thailand over 28 years, was also dubbed by Canadian newspapers as his "most devoted disciple".
Crane told the court she went to see Dubie at a restaurant to get cash he promised to give her and their six children during a stay in Thailand, but he abused her verbally.
FBI Special Agent Dan McLaughlin, who investigated Dubie in Hawaii in 2001, called him "a David Koresh-type figure" - the leader of a Branch Davidian religious sect who was killed in a fire in a 1993 ranch raid along with 53 adults and 21 children.
Crane's Thai lawyer said he was satisfied with the sentence on the murder charge, but would appeal on the firearm penalty as his client did not own or carry the pistol to the restaurant.
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