What would you have done?
What would your reaction have been if you came home from a business trip two days early, heard noises coming from your bedroom, had gone down the hall to investigate and found your sweet innocent wife tied to the bed with a gag in her mouth as a large man you've never seen before violently had his way with her?
I think that my reaction was the right one given the circumstances that I discovered in the bedroom that day.
To me it looked like my wife was being raped. The man was much bigger than me so I stood no chance of helping my wife without a weapon.
As a hunter I have two deer rifles so before the man saw me I snuck down the hall, retrieved one of the rifles, went back to the bedroom and fired a round into the back of his head.
Should I have tried to get him to stop without killing him? Yes, there's no doubt that I should have tried, but it appeared to me that the man was raping my wife. She was crying, she was screaming through the gag, she couldn't fight him because she was tied up, and he was treating her very rough; what was I supposed to do when I discovered a scene like that? I had to stop him no matter what and the only way I could be sure of doing that was to shoot.
At close range the high powered round entered the back of his head and as it left through his forehead it caused the whole front of his head to explode outward splattering the bedroom with blood and bits of brain, skull, skin, and hair.
He collapsed forward onto my wife who had a look of absolute fear and terror in her eyes as I rolled his body off of her and she saw me for the first time.
I pulled the gag from her mouth and asked her if she was okay, and told her everything was going to be alright as I began untying her.
When she was loose I expected her to be quite shaken by her experience and to hold me as her hero, but she didn't. She got off the bed, grabbed the phone and called 911 immediately.
I went to hold her, but she pushed herself away from me with a look of terror in her eyes.
The first words that she said to me were to beg me not to kill her. I looked at her in amazement and asked her why she thought I was going to kill her. She reminded me of the numerous times that I'd said that if I ever caught her cheating I'd kill her lover; then I'd kill her.
I don't really know if I had meant it or not, but I had said that many times. Anyone that knows us can tell you that I've always been very possessive when it comes to my wife. I don't like it when other men ask her to dance so I certainly wouldn't have wanted to share her with other men. Would I have killed her for cheating on me? I don't know.
I told her that I didn't consider being tied up and raped cheating and she broke down in tears. I asked her what was wrong and she told me that what I had walked in on wasn't rape, it was completely consensual. She had wanted to be tied up, gagged, and treated rough by her lover.
She had invited the man over to do that to her. That's when I broke down crying.
If the gun had been in my hands at that moment I don't know whether I would have pulled the trigger or not, but luckily the gun was where I'd dropped it across the room after I had shot the man that now lay dead on our bed.
Before I had a chance to decide whether to go pick up the gun or not the police showed up and with guns drawn they took me into custody and after letting my wife wash the blood off of her body and get dressed they took her down to the station for questioning.
My brother is a lawyer so he came down to be with me as I gave my statement to the police.
I told them exactly what had happened. I had come home early from a business trip and found my wife tied and gagged on the bed as a large man roughly and violently ravaged her body. To any normal person that stumbled across such a scene the immediate thing to think would be that it was rape. I knew that I had no chance of winning a fight against him and if I called the cops he would continue to rape her until they showed up and might get away. I had to stop him so I retrieved my gun. The husband in me saw my wife being raped in our own bed and snapped. I pulled the trigger and the deed was done.
They booked me on a murder charge.
They also took a statement from my wife, but I didn't find out what she had said until she testified during my trial.
During the trial my wife was put on the witness stand and she explained that she had been having an affair with the man that I had killed for several months. She testified that she believed that I had no idea about the affair because she felt that if I had known I would have divorced her on the spot. She testified that on the date in question she thought I was still going to be away on business so she had called her lover over to live out one of her fantasies. She described her fantasy of being completely helpless and being used in a rough manner. She described how she had been tied to the bed, she described how she had been gagged, and she described what her lover had done to her before I got there and what he was doing when I entered the room. She made it clear that her fantasy was to essentially be raped in a controlled situation with someone that she knew and trusted.
She said that since I did not know that she was having an affair, since I had never met the man that was her lover, and because of the similar appearance of what was happening to an actual rape that there was only one conclusion I could have made when I entered the room that day.
She testified that she believed that there was no premeditation in what I had done. She testified that she did not believe that it was an act of revenge. When the prosecutor asked why she believed that it wasn't premeditated or revenge my wife shocked everyone when she replied that her being alive was proof that I believed it was rape and not an affair.
When asked to explain she told them about how I had frequently said that if I ever caught her cheating on me I would kill both her and her lover. She believed that I was serious about that threat so the fact that I hadn't killed her was proof that I had no idea about an affair and thought that what I had walked in on that day was a rape.
I don't know whether telling the jury about my threats helped or hurt my case. It demonstrated that I was the jealous type and thought that I was capable of killing, but I had threatened to kill her and her lover if I caught her cheating and I had only killed her lover so maybe it demonstrated that I truly believed that it was a rape.
The jury finally decided that I wasn't guilty of premeditated murder, but I had still killed another person and it had not been in direct self defense so I was convicted of some manslaughter charge and sent to jail for three years.
I wanted to file for divorce, but my wife begged me to reconsider and I told her that if she could spend the entire three years of my confinement without having sex with anyone and then look me in the eye and make me believe that she still loved me and that she'd remained faithful during my imprisonment I would consider a reconciliation. I still loved her and even after cheating on me she seemed to still love me.
She agreed to my terms. I wasn't about to take her at her word so I had my friends and family keep their eyes on her to see if she was cheating on me, then they would report to me with what they saw.
