Eric Duane Newman, 55, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Tuesday in the January 2018 death of his longtime girlfriend Tamara Tucker

A Kansas man has pleaded guilty to killing his girlfriend by strangling her then pushing her over a balcony on a cruise ship off the coast of Florida last year.

Eric Duane Newman, 55, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Tuesday in the January 2018 death of his longtime girlfriend Tamara Tucker.

Newman and his 50-year-old girlfriend were on a Carnival cruise from Jacksonville, Florida, to the Bahamas at the time.

The couple were staying in a cabin on the 13th deck.

Newman admitted during his plea hearing in federal court in Kansas that the couple started arguing in their cabin just before midnight on January 18.

He said he strangled Tucker then pushed her over the cabin room balcony railing to the 11th deck.

Newman and his Tucker were on a Carnival cruise from Jacksonville, Florida, to the Bahamas at the time of her death

He admitted that the couple started arguing in their 13th deck cabin just before midnight on January 18 He said he strangled Tucker then pushed her over the cabin room balcony railing to the 11th deck

Tucker died from blunt force trauma caused by the fall.

At the time, the cruise ship was about 30 nautical miles from New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

In the months after her death and prior to being charged, Newman wrote on a Facebook group set up in Tucker's memory.

'I miss u more than u will ever know I hope some day soon we can be reunited. Love always and forever,' Newman wrote.

Tucker was a full-time faculty member in the social work department at Park University in Parkville, Missouri, from 2012 to 2017.

She had been an adjunct instructor before that since 2007.

Newman is due to be sentenced on March 18, 2020.