LONDON, Ky.
(AP) -- A Kentucky man called 911 just minutes after killing his wife,
sobbing and confessing to a dispatcher that he fatally shot the
cancer-stricken woman, and asking to take a last look at her before his
arrest, according to recordings released Thursday.
Ernest
Chris Chumbley, 48, cries throughout the 16-minute call placed around
2:30 a.m. Wednesday and says he shot the woman twice in the face with a
.32-caliber handgun in their southeastern Kentucky home. He said in a
jailhouse interview after the shooting that he shot his wife to end her
pain from terminal breast cancer.
"Give me police, I'm under arrest," Chumbley says on the call.
Chumbley
has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge and is being held in jail on a
$200,000 bond. He is being kept in a single isolation cell, which is
monitored continuously by video, Laurel County Jailer Jamie Mosley said
Thursday afternoon.
Police found 44-year-old Virginia Chumbley's body in the bedroom when they arrived.
Defense
attorney Kelly Ridings said Thursday that it was too early in the case
to comment. Chumbley has a court hearing on Tuesday.
Chumbley
left the gun in the bedroom and told police he was unarmed. He told the
911 dispatcher that his wife was a cancer patient and was supposed to
go to the doctor the next day.
"Two shots, that's all I did to her," he said.
Near the end of the call, he asks the dispatcher if he can go to his wife's body in the bedroom, but he is told not to move.
"Can I go see her? I want to go see my wife," he said, but then agreed not to go to the bedroom.
Chumbley
told WKYT-TV from jail that his wife wanted him to end her pain, and he
told her he could offer her "what the doctor gave you."
"She
said `No, I want you to stop my pain for good,'" Chumbley told the news
station. Mosley said Chumbley has declined further interviews from the
jail.
Neighbors in the small subdivision near
the Appalachian foothills said that the husband and wife were a happy
couple, but that Virginia Chumbley's cancer had taken a harsh toll in
recent years.
"They seem like a normal family. We were just all shocked that it happened," said Cheryl Cobb, who lives next door.
Stan
Campbell, another neighbor, said the couple loved each other dearly.
But the cancer put a strain on their lives, and the Chumbleys filed for
bankruptcy in 2009.
"In my opinion, I think
she might have talked him into doing that because she was hurting so
bad," Campbell said. "She was in real bad shape. I know she was
hurting."
Neighbors awoke to police lights, and some saw Chumbley being led away in handcuffs.
"He had a lot of pressure on him," Campbell said. "He loved his wife so good he would do anything for her."
