Man Who Killed Wife Failed Bar 4 Times
After Clifton Eames failed the Texas bar exam four times, he helped persuade the state supreme court to adopt a more flexible rule last year about how many times applicants could take the test.
By this point, however, his life was spiraling downward. Monday afternoon, he allegedly murdered his wife and then was fatally shot himself by Houston police after he reported her murder to church workers. Family members attribute the crimes to Eames’ unhappiness over seeing his own career stall as she successfully pursued her dream of becoming a dentist, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Ralph Roubicek, the stepfather of the murdered woman, Mina Rosenthal-Eames, said the couple pledged to support each other as they each pursued a professional education. Even though Eames reportedly could have tried at least once more to pass the bar exam—the supreme court, which formerly had a hard-and-fast limit of five tries now allows applicants to petition to take it again after that—he apparently was hit hard by his bar difficulties and viewed his lobbying success as a glass half-full, according to an earlier Chronicle article.
With his own professional career stalled, Eames became increasingly upset that his wife was in school instead of working, according to Roubicek. When the couple died, they were divorcing, with a court hearing scheduled the following day.
“This is a terrible sad story,” he tells the Chronicle, “because what it all boils down to is that a wife didn’t do what her husband wanted her to do. Mina was just doing something that a lot of women don’t have the guts to do. But Mina did. And it cost her life.”
