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Matthew Phelps pleaded guilty to first degree murder on Friday after confessing in court that he stabbed his wife in the bedroom and told Raleigh police that he had taken too much medicine for the cold.
Phelps, a graduate of a 29-year-old Bible college, called 911 in September 2017 and told dispatches that he had just come out of a dream, finding himself covered in blood near his dead woman and a bloody knife in her bed. An autopsy later showed that Lauren Ashley-Nicole Phelps had been stabbed 123 times.
He explained in the 911 call that he had taken a high dose of Coricidin Cough and Cold because "it can make you feel good and sometimes I can not sleep at night".
Prosecutors said Friday that a blood test had revealed the presence of cough chemicals in Matthew Phelps' body, but not a toxic amount that could cause vertigo or hallucinations.
In court Friday, Phelps stood up and faced the family of his deceased wife, apologizing for a senseless act that he believed himself unable to commit.
"I feel like a monster," he said. "One of the miserable. Part of the darkness that we do not know. "
More than 50 people, most of them from the Hope Lutheran Church of Wake Forest, were in court Friday morning to support Lauren Phelps. They wore buttons with a picture of the woman and t-shirts marked #LaurensLight.
"The thoughts of all his little body endured at the hands of Matthew are the basis of my nightmares," said his mother, Laurie Hugelmaier, in court.
As part of his plea, Matthew Phelps will serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
"He's asking to go to jail to avoid death," his lawyer Elliot Abrams told The News & Observer.
Prosecutors said Friday that Phelps was behaving violently towards his first wife, dragging her in the corridors by the hair – an act that led to their divorce.
He contacted Lauren Phelps via Instagram because they had attended college in Kentucky. Prosecutors said blindly that Lauren Phelps had started dating Matthew and the couple soon married.
But their union was fragile from the beginning. Prosecutors said Lauren Phelps was thrifty and was hoping to open a Hallmark store. Matthew Phelps, they said, was not working and contributing to household finances, spending thousands of dollars on iTunes cards and Xbox subscriptions.
In April, court documents described martial problems between Phelps and his wife, who had been married for less than a year. Some friends told the investigators that the couple often quarreled, and one detective wrote that Lauren Phelps took "drastic measures" to cut her husband's expenses and planned to end the marriage.
Also in April, the search warrants revealed that Phelps was obsessed with the movie "American Psycho", which describes the life of a serial killer. A detective wrote that he had posted on Instagram pictures of himself dressed as a main character and had told a friend that he was wondering how it would be to kill someone else.
Beth Agner, Lauren Phelps' sister, spoke directly to Matthew Phelps in court on Friday.
"Matt, jail a scary place," said Agner. "But being separated from God is worse, and his judgment is harder than anything this court can give."
"The sky has no phone, no computer, no social media," said Laurie Hugelmaier. "Lauren will live in my memory."
Josh Shaffer: 919-829-4818, @ joshshaffer08
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