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Affidavit: Denver man killed wife hours after she found out he was having Tinder affair

Posted at 4:04 PM, Mar 05, 2018
and last updated 2018-03-05 18:04:33-05

DENVER – The man recently charged with murdering his wife in a three-year-old murder case killed her on the same day she found out he was having an affair with a woman on Tinder, according to new details contained within an affidavit for his arrest unsealed Monday.

Robert Wayne Feldman, 53, remains jailed without bond on a count of first-degree murder for the March 2015 death of his wife, Stacy Feldman.

Feldman had originally told police he found his wife dead inside their bathtub on March 1, 2015 and that she’d eaten marijuana edibles the night before. The medical examiner was for years unable to determine Stacy’s cause or manner of death, so her death remained a mystery.

But according to the affidavit, police believe Feldman murdered his wife after she found out he was having an affair with another woman.

The affidavit says that the woman with whom Feldman was having an affair contacted Metro Denver Crime Stoppers about three months after Stacy Feldman’s death to report that she’d talked with Stacy about the affair shortly before Stacy’s death.

The woman said she’d met Robert on Tinder in February 2015, and that the two had talked, gone on dates, and had sex at least once in the months before Stacy’s death.

Robert had told the woman he was divorced, but she grew suspicious of his claim and hopped on Google to figure out if he was telling the truth. The affidavit says the woman emailed Stacy on the morning she died, and that the two had talked about the affair.

“Stacy had told her Robert cheated on her before and that she was, ‘done with him,’” the affidavit says.

The affair was just one of several things that led police to believe Robert had indeed killed his wife, according to the affidavit.

Both police officers and firefighters at the scene where Stacy was found dead told police investigators that Feldman tried to intervene in their investigation, and the officer who wrote the police report said he got the impression that Feldman “was over acting in an effort to avoid speaking with him.”

Firefighters said Feldman was “purposely not cooperative” and that he “made a concentrated effort to not answer questions.” He also at one point told investigators he didn’t want an autopsy on his wife conducted, the affidavit says.

Further, Stacy’s autopsy showed she had no signs of THC, the active component of marijuana, in her system, despite her husband’s claims she’d taken edible.

And Stacy’s sister told police that Feldman had told family members he was awaiting a “large” life insurance settlement for Stacy’s death three months after she was allegedly killed. Records showed Feldman had bought a $750,000 policy in his wife’s name in 2010. He was the benefactor of the policy.

And a month after Stacy’s sister’s conversation with police, Feldman himself called the Denver Medical Examiner’s Office to ask if it could send a letter to the insurance company showing Stacy’s death was not suspicious.

With all of those factors combined, authorities called in an outside doctor who is “a nationally recognized expert in domestic violence related strangulation and suffocation injuries” in October last year, the affidavit says.

Two months later, the unidentified expert reported back to police and prosecutors that he believed Stacy died as a result of strangulation or suffocation, and that her multiple injuries were the result of “an assault, which included blunt force trauma, strangulation and suffocation,” according to the affidavit.

The doctor’s determination was made in late December, and Feldman was arrested and charged in February. Court records show he remains held without bond pending his next court appearance.