Wife of suspect in double murder near Mooresville charged with aiding him, sheriff says

The wife of a suspect in a double murder near Mooresville on Saturday was arrested this week, accused of helping her husband after the killings, Iredell County Sheriff Darren Campbell said Wednesday.

In a news release, Campbell didn’t say how investigators believe 40-year-old Ashlee Louise Klepfer assisted her husband, Justin Strawser, after the killings.

The fatal shootings occurred in a house on the 100 block of Home Drive, off Bailey Road and U.S. 21 northwest of Mooresville.

Strawser, a 39-year-old resident of Cleveland, N.C., later died during a violent standoff with deputies at his wife’s home in the 1500 block of Ostwalt Amity Road in Troutman.

Klepfer’s home is seven miles from the one where the murders occurred.

Investigators also determined that Klepfer allowed four juveniles who were in her home to access firearms during the hours-long standoff, according to the news release.

Homicide investigators obtained arrest warrants on Tuesday charging Klepfer with felony accessory after the fact, five counts of misdemeanor contributing to the delinquency of a minor, four counts of failure to secure firearms from a minor and four felony and misdemeanor drug-related counts.

Deputies arrested Klepfer during a traffic stop in Statesville, Campbell said.

A 15-year-old boy in her vehicle was taken into custody after deputies found a loaded handgun and methamphetamine on him, the sheriff said.

Klepfer was jailed without bond because she was currently out of jail on a charge of violating school attendance law, Campbell said.

Killings on Home Drive

On Home Drive Saturday, deputies found the bodies of two men who had been tied up and shot, and a third who was critically wounded, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.

The men were shot during a home invasion related to “narcotics and robbery,” and the victims and suspect knew each other, the sheriff’s office said in a previous news release.

“This was not a random home invasion,” the office said.

Information about the suspect, later identified as Strawser, led deputies to the home on Ostwalt Amity Road, according to the sheriff’s office.

Deputies “were met by a man who pointed a gun at them and, barricaded himself inside the home, and began firing at the deputies with an AR-15 rifle,” the sheriff’s office said.

Strawser fired at officers each time they tried to coax him outside, officials said. When negotiations failed, deputies deployed gas into the home, prompting juveniles inside to flee the home, according to the sheriff’s office.

Wearing a bulletproof vest, Strawser came out behind the juveniles, “firing his rifle at the deputies. The deputies returned fire, killing the suspect,” the sheriff’s office said.