[chris]

A Sheboygan, Wisconsin, woman severed roughly half of her 79-year-old husband's tongue as he leaned in for a goodnight kiss in December 2010, then went outside and sang Christmas carols while he struggled to call for help, according to police and court records.

Karen Lueders, 57, was charged with felony mayhem after the Dec. 6, 2010, attack, which prosecutors said happened while she was in a manic state. Her husband, William Lueders, told police he had leaned over to kiss her when she bit off part of his tongue, according to the criminal complaint.

William Lueders dialed 911 himself, but dispatchers had trouble making sense of his speech because of the injury, according to police. Operators sent officers to the couple's home because the caller sounded distressed. At the scene, police said they pieced together what had happened through a series of yes-or-no questions the injured man answered with nods.

Officers found Karen Lueders outside, singing holiday songs and carrying a New Year's noisemaker, according to the complaint. She blew the horn in an officer's ear and threw a cup of coffee at police, the report said. Her husband was inside, still bleeding and holding gauze to his mouth.

He was taken first to a Sheboygan hospital and then to Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa, where surgeons reattached the severed portion of his tongue, according to news accounts. The man asked officers not to arrest his wife, but she was booked on a mayhem count that carried a maximum of 25 years in prison.

Friends and relatives told investigators that Lueders had a history of manic episodes and had stopped taking the medication that controlled them, according to court records. A judge ordered a competency evaluation, and she was later found fit to stand trial.

In June 2011, Sheboygan County Circuit Judge L. Edward Stengel accepted a plea agreement under which Lueders was found to have committed the mayhem but was not held criminally responsible because of a mental disorder, the Wisconsin Law Journal reported. She was given no jail time and ordered to continue outpatient treatment, and her $5,000 cash bond was returned. The couple was allowed to keep living together and appeared at hearings holding hands.