Former American Gladiators champion Cheryl Wilson-Minelli’s rocky marriage ended in a gruesome scene when her husband’s rage exploded and he attacked her with a hammer and knife, attorneys said Tuesday as Juan Minelli’s trial began.

Prosecutors said Minelli killed his wife on March 3, 1997, at their Oakland Park home because he didn’t want to lose custody of their daughter, Brittany, 3.

But the defense told the predominantly male jury that Minelli was in the grip of panic because he thought his wife was cheating on him with another woman and she was two hours late getting home. Shortly before the attack, Minelli made a 911 call to Oakland Park Police, his attorney, Sharon Kegereiss, said.

“It’s my wife, she’s having a lesbian affair with somebody,” Minelli told the dispatcher. “I don’t want her around my daughter. She’s right now with her lesbian lover. Is there anything I can do?”

Later that night, Minelli made a second 911 call and told another dispatcher that he had killed his wife.

Prosecutor Peter Magrino said Minelli, 37, a former pro boxer, beat his wife, stabbed her with kitchen knives, then beat her on the skull with a hammer.

Minelli’s hands were so bloody that the knives slipped and he injured himself, he told police.

He left their daughter watching a videotape in her bedroom, then cleaned up and called his parents in California to ask for enough money to leave the country. When they refused and told him to turn himself in, he called the police and confessed.

Wilson-Minelli, 31, was a 1984 Northeast High graduate, a highly decorated track and field star and a one-time Olympic hopeful. Using the stage name Jasmine, she was the 1993 grand champion of the popular TV sports challenge show American Gladiators.

Minelli, a maintenance worker at a psychiatric hospital, told police hours after the killing that he had considered killing his wife in the past. He said he even thought about lowering the barbell on her while she was lifting weights so her death would look accidental.

But Kegereiss said Minelli’s actions that night do not add up to premeditation and he should not be convicted of first-degree murder.

“It’s a tragedy produced by the most intense kind of emotions. The emotions produced by people who are intimately involved,” Kegereiss said. “It’s not a premeditated murder.”

Paula McMahon can be reached at or 954-356-4533.