While the three children of Elisabeth Witte mourned the loss and honored the memory of their slain mother Friday, their father - the man who murdered her in a downtown parking structure - told a judge that he hoped to live long enough for his children to tell him that they are sorry.

Gerhard Witte fantasized out loud what that moment might be like:

"Dad," he imagined them saying. "We are sorry this thing happened."

Witte, who represented himself during his three-day trial, was convicted Wednesday of first-degree intentional homicide. He was sentenced Friday to life in prison with no chance of early release.

Witte was so self-absorbed during his sentencing hearing that Scott Anderson, an advisory attorney appointed by the court, twice interrupted Witte in frustration, telling him: "Stop talking about yourself!" and "Don't you think you ought to apologize?"

"I cannot apologize for an act I had no control of," Witte said.

Witte, 72, is a physician who, during an acrimonious divorce from Elisabeth Witte in 2005, bragged to police that he would not need a gun to kill her because, as a medical doctor, he knew "precisely where to cut."

May 2008 attack

He attacked his former wife on May 25, 2008, after Elisabeth Witte, having just finished performing with the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, was walking to her car. He stabbed her in the abdomen and then slit the 65-year-old woman's throat.

On Friday, Witte repeated what he had said during his trial: that he is a man of such high moral caliber, of such intellect and reason, of such deep love for family and tradition, that he could not have ruined his life by killing his wife unless he was out of his head.

"There is no explanation for crazy," he said.

Witte certainly looked the part. His stringy gray hair hung below his shoulders, his stringy gray beard hung to his chest. Having refused to wear street clothes, his skinny white arms and sandaled feet poked out from beneath the blue, pleated smock that he, as a suicide risk, is required to wear in jail.

The theatrical nature of Witte's presence and of his condition did not escape him. He more than once compared his life to a Greek tragedy in which the hero endures forces beyond his control and which inevitably undo him.

"This is a soul so burdened that it crushed," he said.

Insanity claim rejected

The jury that convicted Witte explicitly rejected his insanity claim.

During Friday's hearing, Assistant District Attorney Kevin Shomin told Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Daniel Konkol that Witte was motived by nothing more than rage over his divorce, his former wife's financial settlement and her refusal, after years of being stalked, to take him back.

"The day Mrs. Witte filed for divorce in 2005 was the day she signed her death warrant," Shomin said.

Karin Witte, 31, spoke in behalf of herself and her two adult brothers.

She offered no sentencing recommendation for Witte, whom she called "this man no longer our father."

She spoke of the family's gratitude to the community for its support after her mother's death, for the dedication of the police and district attorney's office and for Scott Anderson's hard work.

She focused her remarks on her mother's memory, mourning that Elisabeth Witte could not be there to help her and her brothers through such a difficult time.

"We needed her longer," Karin Witte said.

Witte noted that his daughter's eloquent remarks were further proof of his parenting skills.