A Salem man was sentenced to life without parole Thursday after he was found guilty of murdering his estranged wife. The jury found the crime premeditated.

Douglas Steeves, 53, strangled 48-year-old Carmela Saunders to death in her Salem apartment on Aug. 2, 2016, according to the Essex District Attorney’s office. Some of the couple’s children and grandchildren were in the next room at the time of the crime.

After killing Saunders, Steeves went to a Beverly motorcycle club, the DA’s office said. He then went to the Salem police station to turn himself in.

“He told the desk sergeant he had just killed his wife,” Salem Police Capt. Conrad Prosniewski told Boston.com in 2016.


Though Steeves’s attorney argued the crime was committed in the heat of passion, Assistant District Attorney A.J. Camelio argued the murder was “a culmination of years of anger, hatred, and jealousy,” according to a release.

Saunders had taken out a restraining order against Steeves and filed for divorce prior to her death.

Camelio also presented the jury with text messages from Steeves to one of his daughters in the weeks before Saunders’s murder to prove it was premeditated. In the messages, Steeves said Saunders’s “days were numbered,” the release said.

“Carmela Saunders was a mother and a grandmother whose life was needlessly, selfishly, and cruelly cut short by this defendant,” Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said in a statement Thursday. “While this verdict and sentence provide justice to her family and friends, nothing we do can alleviate their grief and loss.”

Steeves’s sentence of life without parole is mandatory for the crime he was convicted of, according to the DA’s office.