Minnesota man kills Air Force vet ex-wife days after wedding to new husband, triggering 10-hour standoff
A Minnesota man accused of fatally shooting his ex-wife, an Air Force veteran who remarried just days before her murder, was arrested and charged following a 10-hour standoff with law enforcement.
Robert McCloud is facing a count of intentional second-degree murder in the death Lauri Deatherage, according to Hennepin County court documents filed Tuesday. The former couple finalized their divorce more than three years ago and the victim had since moved on with Billy Deatherage, a fellow service member she initially met while she was stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota 30 years ago.
Deatherage said the pair reconnected as friends and that he proposed this past spring.
Just four days after their wedding, Lauri Deatherage was murdered inside her home in Robbinsdale, according to WCCO. When police arrived on the scene Friday around 9:15 a.m., they discovered the 48-year-old newlywed dead from a gunshot wound to the head.
During the following 10-hour standoff with law enforcement, McCloud repeatedly told officers he planned to kill himself before he was taken into custody around 9 p.m.
Prior to the deadly shooting Friday morning, police said McCloud mailed flash drives to family members in which he similarly revealed his intentions to commit suicide. He acknowledged that it was unfair to involve his ex-wife, but noted that she “had just remarried and he wasn’t going to let ‘that hillbilly’ get all his stuff and his wife,” the complaint said.
If convicted, McCloud faces up to 40 years in prison.
With News Wire Services
