Fact Check

Wife Crushes Husband

Did a woman kill her husband by sitting on him?

Published Dec. 31, 1998

Claim:

Claim:   A woman killed her husband by sitting on him.


Status:   Undetermined.

Origins:   Making no claims as to this story's veracity, I merely present it as found in a 1984 newspaper:



Harrisburg, Pa. (AP) — A man whose wife weighed twice as much as he did was squashed to death when she sat on him during a domestic quarrel, the Dauphin County coroner said Thursday.

Kay Weaver, 36, sat on her husband Kenneth, 41, for five to ten minutes in their rural home in nearby Elizabethville, said Dr. William B. Bush, the county coroner.

"The massive amount of pressure on his chest rendered him unable to breathe," said Bush, whose office conducted an autopsy and investigation. "Because of that, he suffocated."

State trooper Claude Mohr, who investigated the case, said Mrs. Weaver weighs about 280 pounds. Bush said the woman's husband was a "very small, very thin" man, weighing between 125 and 140 pounds.

Mrs. Weaver was not in custody and will probably not be charged, the trooper said. "She was trying to restrain her husband," Mohr said. "There's no indication there was any foul play intended."

Weaver came home drunk and in a bad mood at about 4 p.m. Tuesday, Mohr said. He soon went out again to go drinking and returned about 9 p.m. after running his truck into a ditch, the trooper said.

After Weaver "threatened to shoot the wife and two sons and burn the house down," his wife attempted to subdue him while a son was sent to get the state police, Mohr said.

Mohr said Weaver's drinking may have contributed to his death.


Barbara "weight of the evidence" Mikkelson

Sightings:   The plot of a Picket Fences episode ("Squatter's Rights," originally aired 11 March 1994) eerily echoes this news story. In it an obese woman confesses to killing her allegedly abusive husband by sitting on him rather than bearing the shame of admitting she accidentally rolled onto him.

Last updated:   1 August 2007





  Sources Sources:

    The San Francisco Chronicle.   "Woman's Extra Weight Kills Her Husband."

    28 April 1984   (p. 16).