Kansas man pleads guilty to murdering girlfriend on Carnival cruise to Bahamas
A Kansas man pleaded guilty Thursday to murdering his girlfriend on a Carnival Cruise Line cruise from Florida to the Bahamas.
On Jan. 19, 2018, Tamara Tucker, 50, and Eric Duane Newman, 55, were aboard the Carnival Elation traveling from Jacksonville to the Bahamas when Newman tried to strangle Tucker and pushed her over the balcony of their 13th floor cabin, the Department of Justice said in a statement Thursday. Tucker hit the 11th deck after the fall and died from blunt force trauma.
Newman pleaded guilty to one count of murder in the second degree in federal court in Kansas.
The murder happened in international waters around 30 miles from New Smyrna Beach, the Justice Department said.
Cruise companies are required to report crimes in U.S. waters or involving U.S. citizens to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. From January 2018 to March 2018, Carnival did not report any homicides, but did report one suspicious death. In 2018, cruise lines reported five deaths, five missing people, six assaults with serious bodily injury and 82 sexual assaults.
An obituary indicated Tucker died two days after her 50th birthday, the Kansas City Star reported. She had one adult son and had been a professor of social work at Park University in Kansas City, Missouri, for 10 years. Before that, Tucker served as a program director of the Child Abuse Prevention Association in Kansas City.
In October, a 26-year-old passenger died after going overboard on the Carnival Dream cruise ship near Galveston, Texas; his body was never found. In September, a 35-year-old Royal Caribbean crew member died after going overboard on the Rhapsody of the Seas when the ship was docked in Dubrovnik, Croatia. In July, a 1-year-old girl died after falling from Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas ship when it was docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
This story was originally published December 19, 2019 at 6:08 PM.
