Fred Lane's wife released 8 years after killing him

Deidra lane who in 2000 killed her estranged husband Fred lane, a former Carolina Panther star, was released from prison this morning after more than eight years behind bars.

Now 33, Deidra Lane pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 2003 and was sentenced to at least seven years and 11 months in prison.

Fred Lane, 24, was shot to death at close range with a 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun at the couple's southeast Mecklenburg home. The first blast struck his chest. The second hit the back of his head.

She claimed to be a battered wife, while prosecutors argued she ambushed her husband as he returned home from a trip. Police found his body just inside the front door. His still-packed bag lay nearby, his keys hung in the door lock.

Lane was the Panthers all-time leading rusher at the time. He had a promising career with the Indianapolis Colts, where he'd just been traded.

“I've learned to deal with it,” Fred Lane Sr. said Monday of his son's slaying. “My wife and I have prayed about it. I've prayed that my son is OK. We feel he's in heaven.

“We'll always miss him and regret what happened.”

Fred Lane Sr. said he wants to continue to see his granddaughter, who is 8 and has been living with Deidra Lane's parents in Columbia.

Defense lawyers said Deidra Lane was a battered wife who feared for her life when she killed her husband.

In the weeks before the killing, while she was nine months pregnant, Fred Lane rammed her head into a wall, broke open her lip and threw her down a flight of stairs, her lawyers said.

On the day of the killing, Deidra Lane called 911 sobbing and screaming: “He came in and he started choking me and he said this baby's not mine. He started hitting me. He wouldn't leave me alone. I kept telling him to stop.

“I've never been so scared in my life. He just wanted to hurt me and my baby. And I was so scared I just shot again.”

But Mecklenburg Assistant District Attorney Marsha Goodenow said Deidra Lane ambushed her husband, killing him for a $5 million life insurance policy.

Goodenow told the judge that Fred Lane had left his wife. “She had nothing unless Fred Lane was dead,” the prosecutor said. “She had nothing but a $5 million life insurance policy. The high lifestyle of a professional football player's wife was gone.”

Goodenow said Deidre Lane lay in wait for her husband, and shot him the minute he walked through the door: “While he was down and hopeless and dying of a mortal wound, she inflicted another mortal wound. She chased him as he crawled through his own blood to administer that last shot."

The judge ruled that Fred Lane's murder was premeditated and deliberate.

Fred Lane was signed by the Panthers as a free agent in 1997, and at one point was earning about $600,000 a year. He became a quick fan favorite and rushed for 809 yards his rookie year. He was traded to the Indianapolis Colts in April 2000. He was the Panthers' all-time leading rusher with 2,001 yards when he was killed.

Deidra Lane walked out of the Raleigh Correctional Center for Women around 9:30 a.m.

Lane won't be totally free though. For the next nine months, she'll be supervised by probation officials.

Lane has asked to have her supervision transferred to South Carolina, and is awaiting final approval.

Her parents were living in Columbia at the time of Fred Lane's slaying. Charles Gary is a successful businessman there. He ran his own real estate company with about 16 licensed agents, enough to tie it for 10th place in 2000 in the Columbia Business Journal's listing of the city's largest real estate firms.

Deidre Lane also pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to commit bank larceny in connection with the 1998 theft of $41,200 from a Wachovia branch on Providence Road in Charlotte. She was sentenced in 2003 to four months in prison.

Her brother, John Brandon Gary, was convicted of committing five bank robberies in Mecklenburg between 1999 and 2000.

Sentenced to 114 years in prison, Gary was accused of getting away with $310,864 in the bank heists.

His projected release date is April 25, 2101.

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The Bitch should have gotten the gas chamber!