Man who kidnapped ex-wife gets life sentence in federal court

Teri Jendusa-Nicolai feels a sense of relief now that she knows the man who beat and kidnapped her will be spending the rest of his life in prison.

"The maximum sentence can bring back some security for my family," she said on Friday.

David M.Larsen was given a life sentence for kidnapping charges by Judge Rudolph Randa in federal court in Milwaukee Thursday. He also received 120 months in jail for interstate domestic violence.

"I'm not going to say you're a monster, but this is a long time coming," Randa said in court, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Larsen had already been convicted in 2005 in Racine County, Wis., of attempted first-degree homicide and was serving 37 years in jail. The federal case was brought forward because the case spanned two states.

Larsen, who was an air traffic controller for Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling at the time, kidnapped and beat his ex-wife at his Wisconsin home in January 2004 when she came to pick up their children.

Larsen drove Jendusa-Nicolai in the back of his pickup truck to a Wheeling storage facility from Wisconsin ­- with their daughters in the front seat - and crammed her into a 3-foot garbage container that had been duct-taped shut.

Police found her the next day in the unheated facility. Jendusa-Nicolai lost her unborn child and had to have all her toes removed due to frostbite.

"You can never forget something like that," she said. "I can never truly forget. At least now, my family, we can try and get on and leave it behind us."

Jendusa-Nicolai and her husband both read statements at the sentencing Thursday to ensure they would no longer have to fear Larsen.

"He has no remorse at all for what he did," she said. "He was a wife-beater who couldn't control me anymore because I had left. I started a new life, married a new person and - he couldn't stand not being able to control and dominate me."

Jendusa-Nicolai continues to speak out about domestic violence so that other women don't have to face what she did.

"To us, it's like he's dead because we will never have to deal with him again," she said.

• Daily Herald news services contributed to this report.