A judge Thursday blasted the Latvian stunner convicted of stabbing her boyfriend in the chest with a 9-inch steak knife for the lack of remorse she showed in her jailhouse with the NY Post as he sentenced her to 8 ¹/₂ years prison.
“From what you’ve said to me today and what you said in the New York Post post-conviction news article I don’t see much evidence of insight on your part,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marcy Kahn scolded Yekaterina Pusepa, who sat at the defense table with her head meekly bowed. “I understand that you’re devastated but you’re devastated that you’re convicted.”
Despite Khan’s harsh words, she tossed Pusepa, 23, in state prison for only 8.5 years – sparing her the maximum term of 25 years.
A jury found the volatile beauty guilty of attempted murder in November of 2013 for nearly killing her lover Alec Katsnelson during a heated argument in his luxury Gold Street pad.
The Baltic beauty was famously photographed by The Post weeping on the street in her blood-splattered, midriff-baring shirt just after the knife attack on May 22, 2011.
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Virginia Nguyen asked for 15 years for the fiery vixen, arguing that she called Katsnelson a “coward” and painted herself as the injured party in a jail house interview with the New York Post last December.
Pusepa insisted she was indeed sorry for her actions and asked for leniency in a brief statement to the judge. “I do take responsibility,” she said softly, her long brown hair pulled back in a messy braid. “I didn’t know the extent to which he was hurt. In my heart I never intended to kill him.”
“To say I have no remorse is completely incorrect. It was a fight that escalated to the point where I had to defend myself,” she said.
At trial, Katsnelson, 23, testified that Pusepa flew into a rage after he received a phone message from another woman, and went berserk, stabbing him in the chest, piercing his lung and nicking his heart.
Pusepa countered that she acted in self-defense after Katsnelson punched and kicked her in a coke-fueled fury after they argued about his leaving her purse unattended at a bar.
Kahn referred to Pusepa’s version of events as “implausible” and Katsnelson’s as “sanitized”.
The hotheaded hellcat will likely serve less than six years for the brutal attack.
Pusepa previously told the Post she plans to appeal her conviction.