Multiple news organizations are reporting that a man from the state of Kansas pleaded guilty today to murdering his longtime girlfriend during a cruise from Florida to the Bahamas in January 2018.

As we reported last year, Eric Duane Newman, now age 55, of Topeka, Kansas,  went on the Carnival Elation with his long term girlfriend, Tamara Tucker, age 50, in January of 2018.

The woman reportedly died after she fell from her balcony on an upper deck down to deck 11 on the Carnival cruise ship which had sailed from Jacksonville to Freeport, in the Bahamas. Other passengers sent us photographs of the couple’s cabin and the area where she landed after her boyfriend pushed her over the rails. You can see the photographs here.

In our article at the time, we mentioned that a passenger reportedly was seen handcuffed after the incident. Police from Freeport boarded the cruise ship after the fatality.

The FBI’s subsequent investigation revealed that at approximately 12:15 a.m. on January 19, 2018, Newman physically attacked Tucker following a verbal argument in their cabin, and “strangled her by placing both of his hands around her neck.” In the process, Newman pushed Tucker over the cabin room balcony railing causing her to fall to her death onto the 11^th deck. Ms. Tucker died from blunt force trauma as a result of the fall.

Newman pleaded guilty today before Chief U.S. District Judge Julie A. Robinson of the District of Kansas to one count of murder in the second degree with malice aforethought.

Sentencing has been scheduled for March 18, 2020 before Chief U.S. District Judge Julie A. Robinson.

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Carnival Elation (top) – anonymous; Eric Newman and Tamara Tucker (in happier times)(above) – Facebook.