A North Carolina man is using the bad dream defense — telling a 911 operator he awoke from slumber to find his wife stabbed to death and drenched in blood, reports said.
Matthew Phelps, 28, told the operator in Raleigh early Friday that he fell asleep after taking too much cold medicine and may have accidentally killed his wife in his sleep, ABC 13 reported.
“I think I killed my…,” Phelps said to the operator, according to the outlet.
“What do you mean by that? What happened?” the dispatcher asked.
“I had a dream and then I turned on the lights and she’s dead on the floor … I have blood all over me and there’s a bloody knife on the bed. I think I did it. I can’t believe this,” Phelps told the dispatcher.
Raleigh police charged Phelps with murder on Friday shortly after he made the emergency call. His wife, Lauren Ashley-Nicole Phelps, 29, was found dead from multiple stab wounds.
“I had a dream and then I turned on the lights and she’s dead on the floor,” Phelps can be heard saying on the call.
“How? How?” the dispatcher asked.
At the end of the call, which lasted 7 minutes, Phelps sobbed to the operator and said his wife didn’t deserve what happened.
“She’s not moving at all. Oh my God. She didn’t deserve this,” Phelps said.
He told dispatchers he took the cough medicine Coricidin because he has trouble sleeping.
The makers of the drug told ABC there’s no evidence to suggest it’s associated with violent behavior.
Police don’t believe the crime was a random act and Phelps is being held without bond. He’s due back in court Tuesday.