Woman gets 4 years for exercise death

MIDDLEFIELD, Ohio (AP) — James M. Mason knew his wife since she was born a boy. The janitor and former military man was a boarder in the child’s home and was treated like family.

Many were surprised when he married Chris nearly three years ago, not just because he knew she underwent sex-change surgery three years before, temporarily calling herself Christine Newton-John after the pop singer with the same last name. He was in his 70s, she in her 30s. He was mild-mannered; she had a domineering personality.

Then, last summer, there was another surprise: Chris Mason was accused of exercising her frail husband to death so she could inherit his retirement benefits, in an attack caught on surveillance video.

Police say she forced James Mason, who had heart disease, to do stressful activity in an indoor pool for more than two hours. He collapsed and died the next day after Chris Mason authorized his removal from life support.

She was sentenced Friday to four years in prison after pleading guilty earlier to reckless homicide.

“It’s just been a total nightmare,” said Maryanne Vallandingham, Chris Mason’s mother, who is ill with emphysema and distraught over her daughter’s fate and the death of a close son-in-law.

Although the tale of James and Chris Mason didn’t begin as a nightmare, the relationship always was considered unusual. The marriage seemed not much more than a living arrangement, said Chris Mason’s sister, Cathy Vondrasek, who learned of it only after the two were wed.

“I never knew of them to be romantic,” she said. “Jim was always like an uncle to us.”

Her sister is domineering, “although I hate to say it,” but James Mason was very gentle and laid-back, Vondrasek said.

“Jim was a people pleaser,” Vondrasek said. “If you’d ask him to go to a movie he’d probably say, ‘Sure, why not?’ So my take about him is if you’d say, ‘Hey, you want to get married?’, he’d say ‘OK.’

James Mason, 73 when he died in June, first met his wife’s family in 1963 when he became a boarder at Vallandingham’s home. Four years later, his wife was born as John Leslie Vallandingham.

Chris Mason, now 41, is a former health-care aide for the elderly. In 1983, a decade before her sex-change operation, she decided that she and Mason should be together, she told police. The couple were living together at the time but didn’t marry until Aug. 18, 2006.

Vallandingham, who was present during the attack that killed James Mason but told police she didn’t see any harsh treatment, does recall previous conflicts between the couple.