A Glendale man was sentenced to death on Thursday for shooting and killing his estranged wife back in 2014.
A jury reached a verdict in the case against Edward McCauley, which was read Thursday afternoon.
McCauley was sentenced to death by a jury. After the penalty phase verdict, Judge Frank Moskowitz sentenced him to death by lethal injection.
McCauley was found guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of his estranged wife, Dawn, on Nov. 5, 2019.
“This murder was a heinous and callous act,” Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel said in a Thursday statement.
“In the state of Arizona, a sentence of death is reserved for the worst of the worst. The calculated actions taken by this defendant to murder his estranged wife justify this outcome.”
McCauley will now join 116 other inmates – 113 of whom are men – on death row in Arizona, according to the state Department of Corrections.
McCauley waited outside of Dawn's house for her to leave for work on the night of Nov. 24, 2014. As she walked to her car, he approached her with a handgun and began yelling threats.
Dawn jumped into the car, but McCauley managed to get inside and hit her in the head with the gun.
McCauley exited the truck and fired eight rounds into Dawn's body, killing her. He then fled the scene in a rental car.
Dawn's body was found slumped over the steering wheel of her pickup truck near 59th Avenue and Cholla Street in Glendale.
She was taken to a nearby hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.
The next evening, McCauley was found at a West Valley restaurant and arrested. He later confessed to the murder.
After killing Dawn, McCauley sent profanity-laced text messages to three of the victim’s family members telling them that he killed her.
McCauley later told police that he had written these texts some time prior to the killing and “it was just a matter of pushing send” once the murder occurred.
He admitted that he had contemplated killing his wife since at least 2012, when he began to memorialize these feelings in his diary. He even had a calendar with a handwritten note of “Judgement Day” circled in red on Nov. 23, 2014. Journal entries leading up to that date indicated how many days remained until he would kill her.