Matthew Phelps is behind bars for the murder of his wife, Lauren Phelps, whose body was found at their home in Raleigh, North Carolina.
At around 1:10 a.m. on Sept. 1, 2017, officers with the Wake County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to a home on Patuxent Drive after receiving a 911 call from Matthew.
The then-27-year-old told dispatch that he fell asleep after taking a large dose of Coricidin, a cough and cold medicine. When he awoke, he found Lauren, 27, dead on their bedroom floor, laying in a fetal position.
“Oh, my God! She didn’t deserve this. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this. I’m so scared,” Matthew told dispatch, according to PEOPLE.
Matthew claimed that the cough and cold medicine had left him in a haze, but since he was covered in blood and a bloody knife was on the bed, he said he believes he was the one who killed her.
Responding officers arrested Matthew at his residence. He was booked into the Wake County Jail, where he was held without bond on a second-degree murder charge.
Paramedics transported Lauran, who worked as a Sunday school teacher and an auditor, to WakeMed Health and Hospitals in Raleigh, where she was pronounced dead.
An autopsy showed that Lauren sustained 123 cuts and stab wounds to her face, neck, throat, torso, and arms.
ABC 11 reported that Lauren and Matthew began having marital problems after Matthew, who was studying to be a pastor, started spending more money than they were making on video games.
His spending habits purportedly led Lauren to contemplate divorce.
Lauren’s sister told the program that she thinks Matthew “made a decision that day that Lauren was not gonna leave him, even if that meant he had to kill her.”
The police learned through an investigation that Matthew had a fascination with serial killers.
On his social media accounts, he would often post pictures of himself dressed as the main character in “American Psycho,” Patrick Bateman, who was a Wall Street investment banker by day and a serial killer by night.
One of Matthew’s friends told law enforcement officers that he told him that he wondered what it would be like to kill someone.
Matthew initially stated that he couldn’t remember killing his wife because he had taken cold and cough medicine before falling asleep.
During his October 2018 court hearing, he admitted to Judge Paul Ridgeway that he slashed and stabbed Lauren to death in what appeared to be an attack.
He apologized to the victim’s family. He said, “This was a senseless, mindless act, and I regret every step that led me in that direction.”
“I feel like a monster, one of the wretched, a part of the darkness we don’t speak of. That darkness consumed me until I was blind to the path I had taken and deaf to my own cries for help.”
When Lauren’s father was asked if he forgave Matthew for killing his daughter, he said, “No. Never. I mean, I’ll take him to my grave. And I’ll still hate him.”
“He [Matthew] planned the whole thing from the get-go in my opinion, right from day one to the end,” he told ABC News.
“The last time I saw my daughter, she came over looking for a three-ring binder. She was nervous and a little edgy and it didn’t look like Lauren at all… She looked a mess.”
“I regret it now—that I didn’t ask questions about what was going on.”
After Matthew pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.