MIDDLEFIELD, Ohio — James Mason knew his wife since she was born a boy. The janitor and former military man was a boarder in the child’s home and was treated like family.
Many were surprised when he married Chris nearly three years ago, not just because he knew she underwent sex-change surgery 13 years before, temporarily calling herself Christine Newton-John after the pop singer with the same last name. He was in his 70s, she in her 30s. He was mild-mannered; she had a domineering personality.
Then, last summer, there was another surprise: Chris Mason was accused of exercising her frail husband to death in a swimming pool so she could inherit his retirement benefits, in an attack caught on surveillance video.
She was sentenced Friday to four years in prison after pleading guilty earlier to reckless homicide. “I want to apologize to my former husband’s half-sister for her loss as well as to my family and for my loss,” she said in court.
James Mason, 73 when he died in June, first met his wife’s family in 1963 when he became a boarder at the Vallandingham family’s home. Four years later, his wife was born as John Leslie Vallandingham. Chris Mason, now 41, is a former health care aide for the elderly.
Chris Mason told police that she didn’t intentionally kill her husband and that they were in the swimming pool at their apartment complex so he could exercise.
A security videotape shows Chris Mason pulling her husband by his arms and legs, tossing and dunking him. Sometimes he clings to the side of the pool and his wife pulls him away. She appears to block his path as he tries to get out of the water — 43 times, by the police chief’s count.
James Mason, who had coronary artery disease, suffered a heart attack.
