KEY POINTS:
Lex John Miller had no criminal past and no history of violence before he tried to kill his wife.
He did not use drugs or have a psychiatric illness when he went to carry out his cruel, premeditated plan to end her life.
The judge who sentenced the hardworking millhand said experts had searched for an explanation to the "inexplicable" attempted murder, and could only conclude that Miller, 44, was mildly to moderately depressed.
He and his wife had separated six months earlier and Justice Paul Heath said Miller appeared to be in "emotional turmoil" when he kidnapped her and gassed her in her car.
In the High Court at Rotorua yesterday, Justice Heath permanently suppressed the woman's name, but allowed the Herald to report that she was Miller's wife of 14 years and the mother of his two children.
She escaped her husband's death plot by using her feet to retrieve a pair of nail scissors from her car glovebox.
She and her family did not comment after the sentencing, but the court heard she was suffering severe post-traumatic stress disorder.
"The prisoner has shattered her life and damaged the lives of his children," Crown prosecutor Rob Ronayne said.
Miller showed no emotion when sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison.
The judge said the crime was "the worst of its kind" because of Miller's high level of cruelty and planning.
"The effect on your wife has been devastating. I have no doubt she will suffer emotional trauma for many years to come."
The woman had taken out a protection order against Miller after their separation last September, when he began making threats against her and her family.
In November, Miller went on a working holiday to Australia, where he concocted his plan to kill her. He returned on March 2 and launched the attack two days later.
On March 4, he watched his wife drop their children at school in Whakatane before breaking into her car at a public carpark in the town. He hid inside until she finished work and forced her in when she arrived, binding her limbs and head with tape.
Miller then drove them to an isolated farm, where he connected a pipe to the exhaust. He told his wife he had been planning to kill her for four months and had considered other methods, but chose gassing because he did not like "blood and guts".
He sat in the car with her when the gas was first connected, saying he was going to kill himself as well, but got out when his eyes began to hurt.
His wife freed herself by hiding the scissors under her bottom and cutting the bindings on her hands when he was outside. She managed to drive off with her feet still bound. She crashed through a gate and called police when she reached a nearby house.
