I planned it, he said.
He said he bought the weapon - a .357-caliber Magnum handgun - in Maine in
1987. He was living in New Hampshire at the time. He told me he bought the
gun intending to commit suicide, and went so far as to put the gun in his
mouth. But he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger, he said. That was
almost 16 years ago, and he simply put the gun away. He never even fired
it. It sat there for almost 16 years with that lone round in the cylinder.
Then he said he decided to kill his wife, and Tuesday afternoon, about an
hour before the murder, he put five more rounds in the cylinder.
"I tucked the gun in my jeans," he said, and he stood up and indicated that
he had tucked the gun into the small of his back. He concealed it with his
sweater, which he described as a Christmas present from his mother-in-law.
I asked if Wyatt knew he had a gun in the house. He nodded.
He told me that he had decided Tuesday morning to kill his wife, but that
the plan had its beginnings about a week earlier. He said he had found
Wyatt's private journal. It was in her purse on the floor.
"The house was really cluttery," he said. "That's my fault. I'm the one
who's home all the time."
Erbland, who describes himself as a computer consultant, said he has not
worked since July. Wyatt, of course, was a broadcaster for KMOX. She was
also active in civic affairs.
"I decided I should read it," Erbland said. "There were things in there,"
he said, and his voice trailed off. "The marriage I thought I had. In my
mind, in my heart. I don't know."
Wyatt had told friends that her marriage was crumbling. Erbland said he
knew the marriage was failing, even before he read the journal. But there
it was, somehow more official in written form.
Monday night, the night before the murder, he sought out the journal again.
He knew where she kept it. He read the most recent entries. He said he had
become enraged that his marriage was irretrievably broken. The next
morning, he said, he decided to murder his wife.
He did not want his son home when he killed the boy's mother - the two were
devoted to each other, Erbland said - so he sent the boy to a friend's
house. But the friend and his parents left, and the boy came home. Then
Wyatt came home. She and the boy came upstairs where Erbland was waiting.
He sent the boy downstairs, he said, and asked Wyatt if he could talk to her.
"You know that Nan doesn't suffer fools," he said, "and she didn't suffer
me. But she was willing to give me a few minutes to talk. I apologized to
her. I said I was sorry for being so weak, such a weak man. And a fool. Had
I not been a fool, I would have realized about the marriage, and I would
have been the one to say, 'I want out.'
"She just nodded. She was sitting on the bed. I was standing up. She just
nodded, and then, in Nan-style, she said something like, 'I've got stuff to
do.'
I asked if Wyatt had seen the gun before he shot.
"Yes, she did. She was sitting on that bed facing me, and I pulled the gun
out. She stood up and put her hand out. She said, 'You give me that gun!'
She was strong. That's one thing I always loved about her. She was strong
and forceful. Then she took a step toward me, and you know, it was this
strong woman coming at me. I shot her."
I asked him how many times he shot her.
"Don't make me remember that," he said. He was crying again. He said that
people don't realize what happens when you fire a gun into a person.
"She was a good person, a good wife. She didn't deserve this," he said.
"She'd get up at 3:15 in the morning, and she was always out doing things
in the community. She just wanted to be happy, and I stole that from her,
and I stole that from her son. I deserve the death penalty for this."
I asked him why he didn't shoot himself.
"I wanted to kill myself," he said. "You know why I didn't? I'm a coward."
He said he wanted to apologize to everybody, especially to his son. He said
he was haunted by the sense that the boy knew what had happened. The boy
heard the shots, Erbland said, and came running up the stairs, wanting to
know what had happened. Erbland told him that some furniture had fallen,
and that they were going to go to the boy's grandmother's house. The boy
wanted to know where his mother was, and Erbland told him she was cleaning
up the broken furniture. Why would she do that? the boy asked.
"I dropped him off at his grandmother's house, and I forgot to hug him,"
Erbland said. He was crying again. "Maybe when I'm done, I can ask for
God's forgiveness."
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/Columnists.nsf/Bill+McClellan/D19E980053484E7286256CD40049C2F7?OpenDocument&Headline=%22She+said,+'You+give+me+that+gun!'+...+I+shot+her.%22
