Retired Kansas City area teacher gets 10 years for pushing wife off cliff

ROCKLAND, Maine – A former Kansas teacher convicted of pushing his then-wife off a cliff in a state park is going to prison for 10 years.

A judge on Thursday imposed the sentence on 71-year-old Charles Black, who was convicted of attempted murder in July. The judge imposed a 25-year sentence but suspended most of it.

The retired Shawnee Mission East teacher was convicted of hitting then-wife Lisa Zahn on the head with a rock before pushing her off an 800-foot cliff in Camden Hills State Park in 2011.

Both ended up tumbling down the mountainside and were hospitalized. Black later moved to Utah.

Lisa Black, who now goes by Lisa Zahn, taught at Black Bob Elementary in Olathe and received a stack of awards including the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching and the Christa McAuliffe Fellowship. She was inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame in 2002, and the Olathe mayor proclaimed “Lisa Crooks Appreciation Day.”

Prosecutors said the couple, who had retired to Maine, had been in a dispute about Black’s online affair, and his spending some of Zahn’s $4 million inheritance without her permission. They divorced in 2013.

This story was originally published September 25, 2014 at 2:35 PM with the headline "Retired Kansas City area teacher gets 10 years for pushing wife off cliff."