A Suffolk Superior Court judge today sentenced an abusive husband to life in prison without the possibility of parole following his second conviction for murdering his estranged wife in her bed nine years ago, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley announced.

On Tuesday, a Superior Court jury convicted AGAPITO LAO (D.O.B. 7/10/58) of first-degree murder for strangling 40-year-old Alicia Lao to death in her Chelsea apartment on the morning of May 2, 2000. That conviction follows his 2002 conviction on the same charge, which was overturned by the Supreme Judicial Court because of a flawed appeal.

“Alicia Lao’s family members had to suffer with the knowledge that she was brutally murdered by a man who was supposed to love her,” Conley said. “The pain of that tragedy was compounded by not one but two trials in which they had to hear the most graphic details of her death. Now, two juries have spoken loud and clear with their verdicts: the defendant, and only the defendant, murdered Alicia Lao and has been held to account for doing so.”

Conley urged anyone living in an abusive relationship to seek help and find a way out, drawing attention to the SafeLink Hotline at 877-785-2020.

Prior to sentencing, Superior Court Judge Charles Spurlock denied a defense motion seeking to waive Lao’s presence for the hearing and its statutorily mandated result. Defense attorney Gary Schubert then sought to excuse himself and Lao while members of the victim’s family provided their impact statements to the court.

“Motion denied,” Spurlock said.

The victim’s sister, brother, and daughter all provided statements to the court, two of which were read aloud by the trial prosecutor.

“This was the day that my life changed forever,” Maria Rivera, Alicia Lao’s sister, said of May 2, 2000. “I miss my sister very much, I miss that I don’t have her here to call when I want to talk or have a problem I need help with. I can’t call her and share my happy moments with her, I will not be able to call her and plan to take our grandkids to the park,” she said.

“Many times I think that this is all a dream, but it’s really not, she really is gone,” she continued. “No words can ever explain the pain the Mr. Lao’s actions have caused my family, not to mention my niece and nephews whose lives have been torn apart in an instant and my mother who cries for her daughter every day.”

Assistant District Attorney Mark Lee, deputy chief of Conley’s Homicide Unit, read statements submitted by the victim’s brother, and her daughter.

“My family has suffered a great deal and a great loss,” Alicia Lao’s brother, Felix Figueroa, Jr., wrote. “In 2000, we never expected we would have to mourn our sister’s horrific, violent death. We were all affected deeply by her death. We will never see her again, or hear her voice again …. Although she will always be in our hearts, she is missed terribly by all of her family. Our family suffers to this day.”

Lee next read a statement from the victim’s daughter, Yesenia Lao.

“I would like to begin by saying that because of your selfish actions, my life has been a living nightmare,” the statement said. “Since all of this has happened to me, I have graduated high school, have had two children, and gotten married. Those should have been the happiest moments in my life, but they weren’t, because my best friend, my mother, was not there.”

“I am unhappy, because I can’t share my family with my mother. I can’t take my children to see their grandmother,” she continued. “I never thought that something like this would have happened to me. It’s like a bad dream that I can never wake up from. I just don’t understand why and how you have done something so horrible, not just to me, but to my entire family.”

During the six-day trial, Lee presented evidence and testimony proving that Agapito and Alicia Lao married in Puerto Rico in 1979 before moving to Massachusetts and settling into a Chelsea triple-decker. During the course of their relationship, they had three children together but their marriage was marred by the defendant’s violent, controlling behavior.

In 1997, when she was a patient at Massachusetts General Hospital, Alicia Lao met and struck up a fast friendship with a custodian who worked in the hospital. The two exchanged phone numbers and began having telephone conversations. The relationship eventually turned romantic. At the time, she was separating from her husband but was still legally married to him.

In 2000, the two made the choice to live together. On April 30 of that year, Alicia Lao went to see the defendant to tell him that she would be filing divorce papers with the court and that her boyfriend would be moving into the Bellingham Street home the next day to live with her and the children.

When he dropped her off from that meeting, he tried to hit her with his car.

On May 1, Alicia’s boyfriend packed two suitcases and took a bus from New York City to Boston, arriving at her home that evening. The next morning, her children had gotten up and were leaving for school at about the same time that her boyfriend was getting ready to leave the house. When he left, she was the only one home.

Evidence and testimony proved that Agapito Lao entered the home sometime between 8:50 and 10:15 that morning, when Alicia Lao was discovered motionless on her bed by her boyfriend. Lao had strangled and beaten her, creating noises that neighbors later recalled for Chelsea Police and State Police detectives assigned to Conley’s office.

Another witness who was outside fixing a car, and who knew the defendant well, testified that he saw him coming out of the apartment.

Though Alicia Lao remained physically alive in the aftermath of the attack, her brain was dead. She was taken off life support on May 17.