Man says he killed his wife because he couldn’t pay her medical bills

A Missouri man charged with strangling his wife told police he killed her while she lay in a hospital bed because he couldn’t care for her or pay her medical bills, prosecutors said.

The man, Ronnie Wiggs, 75, of Independence, Missouri, appeared in court Monday on a second-degree murder charge, records show. A hearing to review his $250,000 bond is scheduled for Thursday.

According to charging documents and other public records, Ellen Wiggs, 72, was admitted to Centerpoint Medical Center in Independence, a suburb southeast of Kansas City, Missouri, to receive a new connection for her dialysis.

According to court documents, Ellen Wiggs was seen “alert and oriented” in her room around 7:30 p.m. Friday. About an hour later, a Code Blue was called on her, records show. (Code blue is a hospital announcement that typically means a patient is in cardiac or respiratory arrest.) According to charging documents, she was unresponsive and had no pulse.

Afterwards, Wiggs was found to have “suspicious injuries,” including redness on her neck and a wound in the middle of her neck, charging documents say. A witness told police her injuries were not the result of rescue attempts, records show.

Wiggs was transferred to the intensive care unit, where medical staff were able to get her pulse back on track. But after discovering she no longer had brain activity, hospital staff began preparing for organ removal, records show. She was pronounced dead the next morning.

At one point, Ronnie Wiggs was overheard by hospital workers saying, “I did it, I killed her, I choked her,” charging documents state.

A hospital spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment today.

An attorney for Ronnie Wiggs was not listed in court records. The Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office declined to comment today.

Wiggs left the hospital after the incident but was later returned by a relative after his wife was found unresponsive, according to charging documents.

Wiggs told police that he killed his wife by choking her, putting his hands around her neck and placing his thumbs on her throat, and that he covered her mouth and nose to stop her from screaming, according to reports it in the court records.

Wiggs told police that he was depressed and that he killed his wife because he couldn’t care for her or pay her medical bills, charging documents say. He also said he had tried to kill his wife twice.

Once, Wiggs told police, he tried to kill her while she was in a rehabilitation facility, but she woke up and told him not to do it. Another time, he told police, he wanted to try to kill her, but he didn’t get a chance because she was hooked up to multiple machines in a hospital.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.