Man who killed son for insurance payout convicted of doing same to wife

When Karl Karlsen admitted in 2013 to murdering his son in Seneca Falls, NY, in order to cash in a life insurance policy, it naturally raised suspicions about the true nature of his wife’s death back in 1991.

To lose one family member appeared a tragic misfortune; to lose two began to look like something worse than carelessness.

Karlsen’s first wife, Christina Karlsen, perished almost 30 years ago in a fire at the family’s home in Calaveras County, California, after getting trapped in a bathroom with a boarded-up window, San Jose’s Mercury News reported.

The 59-year-old and his three children managed to escape the fire, and he soon received $215,000 from his dead wife’s life insurance policy.

Karlsen then moved with his family to his native Seneca Falls, NY, where in 2008 Karlsen’s son Levi, 23, took out life insurance worth $700,000. The policy named Karlsen as sole beneficiary in the event of his son’s death.

Just hours after the paperwork had been completed, Levi was found crushed to death under a truck he had been working on in his father’s garage.

When the death was initially deemed an accident Karlsen thought he was in the clear.

However, after his second wife discovered Karlsen had invested money from his son’s insurance payout in a $1.2 million life insurance policy for her, she went to the police.

Karlsen’s 2013 conviction spurred the reopening of investigations into the seemingly accidental death of his first wife in the early 90s.

On Monday a jury found Karlsen guilty of her murder by arson, deciding that he had started a fire in the hallway after deliberately boarding up the bathroom window to ensure she couldn’t escape the smoke and flames.

Karlsen’s sentencing hearing is set for Mar. 17. He faces a possible maximum life sentence with no option of parole.