Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more!
“Cold-Blooded” Wife Claims She Accidentally Killed Husband: “Just Not Adding Up”
Kimberly Fletcher Groh had searched for how to poison her spouse and ordered arsenic in the days before she claimed Michael Bryan died in a tragic accident.
In the middle of the night on Nov. 30, 2016, a woman called 911 in Lexington, South Carolina, and claimed her husband had died in an accidental shooting after he placed a gun in their bed.
“I just wanted to move it so he wouldn’t be in bed with it,” Kimberly Fletcher Groh told police during an interview on Snapped, airing Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen. “I grabbed the bottom, and he jerked it back, and it went off.”
Police found 55-year-old Michael Bryan dead in bed, with a gunshot wound to his chest, and a rifle laying near him. Groh claimed the night he died, he’d eaten dinner in bed around 8 p.m. and then they’d watched television together in bed. When she got up to let the dog out around 1 a.m., she told police she came back to a gun in the bed.
“I’ve seen suicides. I’ve been to homicides,” ret. Lexington police lieutenant Carroll Bledsoe said on Snapped. “I knew something about this scene was just not adding up.”
Did Michael Bryan shoot and kill himself while in a depressed state?
Kimberly Groh told police that her husband was bipolar and was in a depressive state when he died.
“Kimberly told law enforcement that Michael would consistently leave guns laying around the house,” said Bradley Pogue, assistant solicitor, on Snapped. “She didn’t know if they were loaded or not. But she was afraid that something like this might happen.”
Police discovered plastic baggies of pill capsules as well as powders in Groh’s purse. An analysis showed the pills were temazepam, a sedative commonly used to treat insomnia. She claimed her husband was abusing his medication.
“Everybody that we spoke with said Kimberly was a good wife,” Bledsoe said. “That she had been taking care of Michael while he was suffering through a little bit of depression, and that she had also been busy running the business.”
But Bryan’s son didn’t believe his father was depressed.
“Honestly, there were conversations with my father about his emotions,” John Bryan, Michael’s son, said on Snapped. “Where he’d have thoughts that scared him. But he truly felt suicide is the most selfish thing you can do. He would have never done that.”
What evidence shows Kimberly Fletcher Groh plotted to kill her husband, Michael Bryan?
Police collected and read Kimberly Fletcher Groh’s personal journals.
“There were recent entries where she expressed frustration with Michael’s bipolar disorder, that it was becoming a burden on her. She was also expressing that she didn’t believe that Michael was necessarily in love with her anymore,” Pogue said.
A search of Groh’s electronic devices also showed damning internet searches.
“In May of 2016 she conducted a search for, ‘How to poison your spouse and go undetected.’ Then later, much closer to the time of the incident, on November 1, Kimberly searches, ‘Top ten most deadly poisons to humans,’” Pogue said. “Investigators found a search for, ‘How to operate the 223 Winchester rifle.’ So, this also adds to the suspicion that just a few weeks prior to the shooting, using a 223 Winchester, she’s searching on the internet how to operate that specific gun.”
Groh had also placed an online order for the poison arsenic.
“The coincidences are really starting to stack pretty high,” Pogue said. “And investigators are fairly convinced that this was not an accident.”
A forensic pathologist found Michael Bryan had 39 mg of arsenic in his system when he died.
“I think potentially what she wanted to do was try to slowly poison Michael with arsenic, and she actually did so over a period of time, and I think it just wasn’t a lethal amount because she wasn’t sure how much to give him,” Bledsoe said.
The pathologist concluded there was no evidence Bryan had reached for the gun.
“It wasn’t a close contact wound,” Bledsoe said. “That further solidified and took off the table that Michael had anything to do with pulling the trigger. It would just be too far of a distance for him to reach.”
A DNA analysis of the gun’s trigger showed Groh’s DNA, not Bryan’s.
What motive did Kimberly Fletcher Groh have for killing her husband, Michael Bryan?
The family’s pastor was the first to point out to police that Michael Bryan and Kimberly Groh were having financial trouble.
“[Michael Bryan] said they have a large amount of money coming in, but they also had an even larger amount of money going out,” Pogue said. “[Michael] didn’t understand where the money was going.”
Bryan told his pastor he believed his wife was stealing from their business. Police discovered another motive for murder: a $500,000 life insurance policy for Michael Bryan. Kimberly Groh was the sole beneficiary.
“I mean, you’re left asking yourself, ‘Why not just divorce him? Why did you have to kill him?’” Pogue said. “That obviously points you in the direction of the $500,000 life insurance policy.”
Police found out Groh called to cash in the policy one day after her husband’s death.
"I absolutely believe that Kimberly felt that Michael was worth more dead than alive,” Bledsoe said.
Bryan’s sons had also been written out of his will.
“I think that night was clearly premeditated,” Pogue said. “I believe that Kimberly waited for Michael either to go to sleep or she medicated him to the point that he passed out. She went in there. She took his gun. She loaded it. And she shot him in the chest from the foot of the bed.”
Kimberly Fletcher Groh pled to voluntary manslaughter for the death of her husband and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Watch all-new episodes of Snapped on Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen.
