Missouri dad allegedly murders wife, then texts it was ‘way easier and more satisfying than you can imagine’
By Yaron Steinbuch - New York Post
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A Missouri dad charged with murdering his wife allegedly wrote his name in blood on her butchered, half-naked body — then texted his sister saying it was “way easier and more satisfying than you can imagine.”
John Wonder, 31, is charged with first-degree murder for allegedly stabbing and strangling his 29-year-old wife, Ashli Ehrhardt, inside the Kansas City home where they still lived together despite going through a divorce, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by The Post.
“I keep thinking about how she never screamed. Just took it like a champ,” the accused killer allegedly later wrote a friend on social media. “What a gal.”
Wonder had dropped the couple’s 2-year-old and 4-year-old children off outside his wife’s parents’ home at 8:40 a.m. Friday, speeding off without talking to them, the affidavit said.
About 90 minutes later, an employer at the company where the husband and wife both worked called police to conduct a welfare check after neither showed up, the report said.
Alarmed, Ehrhardt’s parents rushed to the house — and her dad found her stabbed body in the laundry room with a belt wrapped around her neck, the document said.
She was naked from the waist down with her husband’s surname, “Wonder,” scrawled in blood on her leg, the affidavit noted.
A large butcher knife and a cleaver were found lying next to her bloodied body, which was peppered with stab wounds, according to the affidavit.
“The laundry room door was partially open but had been secured with a bungee cord,” it states.
Wonder’s sister said she then received a series of disturbing messages from him that day.
“Hey kiddo. Sorry about the mess,” Wonder allegedly texted her, according to the affidavit. “For the record: it’s way easier and much more satisfying than you can imagine. See you around.”
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He also left a friend a series of Facebook messages noting chilling details — and how he had “no doubt I will be caught today.”
“To honor her. I will not go out by a gunshot (suicide by cop) but by, hopefully, a similar fate as Ashli,” he added, according to the document.
“Still haven’t cried. Still feel nothing. No more anxiety, though. That’s a plus,” he wrote. “Now depleted, in anger I placed her gemstones set next to her body,” he allegedly wrote.
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“I’m guessing they will be finding her body right about now. I started getting calls at 9:30 a.m.,” Wonder wrote his friend in his last message before he was arrested later that day in Valentine, a Nebraska town near the South Dakota border about eight hours from Kansas City.
“Part of me wants to get drunk and watch ‘Shawshank Redemption’ one last time; however, I think it is time for me to go. Goodbye house,” he added, referring to the 1994 prison flick, the affidavit says.
Wonder was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action. He was held on a $1 million cash bond.
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One of his parents said he had been planning to move out of the home on Oct.1, the Kansas City Star reported.
Ehrhardt’s mother posted a moving tribute to her on Facebook.
“This is a post no parent wants to make. Several of you have heard already or seen the news. Closest family and friends have been surrounding us … my heart is completely shattered.. my daughter, Ashli Ehrhardt Wonder was senselessly murdered in her home Friday,” Lisa Spencer wrote.
“She is the beautiful young woman that gave us our beloved grandbabies, who are safe and in our care… I appreciate everyone that has reached out and am grateful that you continue to do so. This journey of losing a child in this way is going to be very long,” she wrote.
“This little tiny boy, was told today that he would never see his mommy again,” she wrote, adding a broken heart emoji and including a photo of the grandson.
“This is the mommy fountain that he has already created in her memory. We will make sure she is remembered in our home every single minute of every single day,” Spencer added.
