UPDATE:
Deidra Lane walked out of the Raleigh Correctional Center for Women just before 9:30 a.m. today, the Charlotte Observer reports. She wore a large white sweater and gold hoop earrings.
She made no comment as she left with her father and oldest daughter in a dark blue BMW.
EARLIER:
Deidra Lane is scheduled to walk from the Raleigh Correctional Center for Women today at 9 a.m., eight years after killing her estranged husband, former Carolina Panthers star Fred Lane Jr.
Fred Lane, 24, was shot twice at close range with a 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun inside the couple’s southeast Mecklenburg home in 2000. The first shot struck his chest. The second was fired into the back of his head as he lay on the floor.
Deidra Lane’s lawyers described her in court as a battered wife who feared for her life. In 2003 she pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to at least seven years and 11 months in prison.
Fred Lane Sr. told the Charlotte Observer Monday that he has learned to cope with his son’s death.
“My wife and I have prayed about it. I’ve prayed that my son is okay. We feel he’s in heaven,” Fred Lane Sr. told the newspaper. “We’ll always miss him and regret what happened.”
Prosecutors argued that Deidra Lane killed her husband to collect on a $5 million life insurance policy. They say she ambushed the NFL running back as he returned home from a trip. Authorities found his body just inside the front door, his bags still packed, his keys still in the door lock.
In an unrelated case, Deidre Lane also pleaded guilty to stealing $41,200 from a Wachovia bank branch in 1998 and was sentenced to four months in prison.
Her brother, John Brandon Gary, was sentenced to 114 years for five Mecklenburg County bank robberies in 1999 and 2000. His projected release date is April 25, 2101, the Observer reported.
Fred Lane played with the Panthers for three years and was the team’s all-time rushing leader before he was traded to the Indianapolis Colts before his death.
Keith Acree, a spokesman for the N.C. Department of Correction, told the Observer that Deidra Lane has been a well-behaved inmate. She had two minor infractions, both occurring in March 2004, prison records show.
