On July 18, 2024, a 35-year-old man died from a single puncture wound to his heart in Appleton, Wisconsin. What happened in the final minutes of his life is now at the center of a murder trial that has captured the community’s attention. Was he murdered? Or did he end his own life?
Prosecutors have charged the man’s fiancée, 40-year-old Samantha Krebs with first-degree intentional homicide, a crime that carries a mandatory life sentence if convicted. Krebs’ trial began earlier this month, with opening statements painting starkly different pictures of what unfolded that summer night.
Outagamie County District Attorney Melinda Tempelis told jurors that Krebs staged the scene and tried to cover her tracks. According to Tempelis, when friends arrived at the couple’s apartment, they found the man bleeding on the floor. In the background of a phone recording from that night, Tempelis said Krebs can be heard saying, “He’s breathing, I don’t think it went through an organ” and “What are we supposed to say? He fell on a knife?”
The friends initially told police that Krebs wasn’t in the apartment, but later changed their stories. One eventually told investigators that Krebs asked them to say her fiancé had stabbed himself. Before leaving the apartment, prosecutors allege, she kissed the man and said, “Sorry, I love you.”
“She knew he wasn’t OK,” Tempelis told the jury. “He was bleeding on the floor in the kitchen when she left.”
The defense, however, has argued this was no murder. Krebs’ attorney, Stephanie Rock, told jurors the fatal wound was self-inflicted during an argument that escalated suddenly. According to Rock, the couple had planned to meet up with friends that night, but tensions flared when the man said he wanted to visit his uncle. Krebs objected, the two argued, and then, Rock said, Krebs saw a knife sheath fly across the room. Moments later, she saw her fiancé clutching his side in pain.
Rock insisted that Krebs immediately tried to help, applying pressure to the wound before their friends arrived. She said the audio recording the prosecution plans to use will not show that Krebs asked anyone to lie for her. Instead, Rock argued, the evidence will demonstrate that Krebs was panicked and traumatized, not covering up a crime.
“You’re not going to hear any testimony about Samantha asking anybody to cover up for her,” Rock said. “The truth in this case is that there was no homicide.”
The defense also noted that there were no defensive wounds on the victim, no signs of past violence between the couple, and no clear motive for Krebs to kill her fiancé. They suggested she left the apartment that night not out of guilt but because she was on probation and worried about items inside the home that violated her terms.
The trial, scheduled to run through Sept. 12, hinges on conflicting accounts, shifting witness statements, and the weight jurors give to audio and video evidence.
