5Th Husband Is Slain; Previous 4 Feel Lucky

CINCINNATI - Della Faye Hall Hoeffer Beyer Bassett Britteon Sutorius was the marrying kind. Five times she wed, each time selecting a man younger or wealthier than the last.

Four marriages ended in divorce, some of her ex-husbands claiming they escaped with their lives.

The fifth ended in a gunshot.

Mrs. Sutorius, 45, is charged with aggravated murder in the slaying of 55-year-old heart surgeon Dr. Darryl Sutorius, found shot in the head Feb. 19 in the basement of the couple's home in well-to-do Symmes Township. She could get life in prison.

A colleague said he had been planning to file for divorce.

"I think this woman has a serious problem with rejection," Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said.

Her third husband, Grant Bassett, said that during their nine-month marriage, she would get wound up watching TV talk shows and threaten to kill him.

"When I heard that Dr. Sutorius was dead, I thought `I'm so . . . lucky to be alive, it's not funny,' " Bassett said.

In 1990, after she divorced Bassett, she was convicted of threatening a boyfriend with a gun.

Her fourth husband, David Britteon, told The Cincinnati Post he survived their marriage only because he hid the bullets to the .44-caliber Magnum.

A week after Sutorius' death, Mrs. Sutorius was arrested and led away from her home in a robe and slippers. Published reports quoted unidentified sources as saying gunpowder had been found on her hands and her husband's.

Her attorney, R. Scott Croswell III, said she expects to be acquitted.

When a grand jury convened last week to indict Della Sutorius, three former husbands and a boyfriend met for the first time.

Bassett said all her husbands had seen same thing in her.

"She was very striking . . . eye-catching," Bassett said. "I thought I was getting . . . a pretty lady, very meek. Lo and behold, Tasmanian devil."