Wyoming News Exchange
Man accused of shooting wife says killing was an accident
By CJ Baker
Powell Tribune
Via Wyoming News Exchange
POWELL — A Wapiti man who shot and killed his wife last year says it was an accident — and he claims his civil rights have been violated since his arrest.
Dennis K. Klingbeil, 77, is facing a first-degree murder charge that alleges he killed 75-year-old Donna Klingbeil “purposefully and with premeditated malice.” Prosecutors allege the killing was the culmination of a long, bitter dispute over the couple’s properties, worth millions of dollars.
Dennis Klingbeil — who attempted suicide after the shooting — has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. In a two-page letter that was made public on Monday, he says he “accidently [sic]” shot his wife on Aug. 5, 2018. His defense attorney, Donna Domonkos, previously suggested the killing could have been an accident, but the recent letter is the clearest indication of what defense Klingbeil plans to offer at trial.
Special Deputy Park County prosecuting attorney Mike Blonigen has argued in filings that Klingbeil’s past statements and actions — including alleged threats to other family members decades earlier — show a pattern of behavior.
“There is nothing sudden about what happened to Donna Klingbeil that night nor was it an accident,” Blonigen wrote in filing.
The case is set to go before a jury in August. “I have led a good life (plus) have never been arrested or in trouble with the law,” Klingbeil said in his letter to District Court Judge Bill Simpson, adding that he and his wife “have been together for 43 years.”
The bulk of Klingbeil’s letter objects to the way he’s been treated since awakening in a bed at West Park Hospital a few days after the killing. After coming out of a coma from an overdose of medications, Klingbeil said a Park County Sheriff’s Office investigator immediately began asking him questions — like, “Do you want to get something off your chest?” — without explaining his rights.
He also claims a mental health provider questioned him despite his requests for an attorney.
“I was not lucid,” Klingbeil wrote. “But questions continued.”