Home Scandal and Gossip Gretchen Anthony murder: Florida man kills estranged wife says she had coronavirus

Gretchen Anthony murder: Florida man kills estranged wife says she had coronavirus

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David Anthony Jupiter, Florida
Pictured, David Anthony Jupiter, Florida man with estranged wife, Gretchen Anthony.
David Anthony Jupiter, Florida
Pictured, David Anthony Jupiter, Florida man with estranged wife, Gretchen Anthony.

David Anthony Jupiter, Florida arrested man denied bond after evidence points to him killing estranged wife, Gretchen, less than a month after she filed for divorce. Her body remains missing.

Florida police say a Palm Beach County man kidnapped and killed his estranged wife – despite the man claiming the missing woman had been hospitalized and later dying of coronavirus.

David Anthony, 43, of Jupiter, upon his arrest six weeks ago remained held without bond on charges of second-degree murder and kidnapping in the death of his 51-year-old wife, Gretchen, whose body has yet to have been found, WPTV reports.

Anthony, who was arrested some 1,900 miles away in New Mexico on March 31, is suspected of killing his wife 10 days earlier.

Days after the alleged slaying, at least five people received text messages that were purportedly sent by the woman on March 23 and 24, according to an arrest report. 

In one message, Gretchen Anthony said she was being ‘quarantined’ for two weeks after being infected with an ‘acute case’ of COVID-19. The messages also indicated she was being held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, as one text read, after she was diagnosed at Jupiter Medical Center, the palmbeachpost reports.

David Anthony told a Jupiter police detective that Gretchen was being treated at the hospital for the virus, but hospital records showed no indication the missing woman was there, despite Gretchen’s blue Mini Cooper being found in its parking lot.

A neighbor of the couple’s later told cops she heard a ‘woman’s voice let out a blood curdling scream’ sometime on March 21, police said.

‘No! No, it hurts,’ the neighbor recalled the woman saying.

But there’s more.

Bizarre event a week prior to estranged wife’s murder: 

Cops found two bottles of cleaning solution and a rag in the couple’s kitchen, as well as towels that had a ‘reddish substance’ that appeared to be blood, police said.

Video from Gretchen Anthony’s home, filmed circa 6.15. am also shows a person investigators say is her estranged husband carrying an ‘unknown object’ into her porch on March 21, police said.

Gretchen then walked onto the porch before ‘muffled yelling’ is heard. A security camera in a garage then showed a ‘blood soaked head of light colored hair’ on a motionless body as David Anthony walked in the background, police said.

A police report described a neighbor saying they took a photo March 22 of Anthony washing down Gretchen’s blue Mini Cooper in her driveway. The neighbor’s husband said that as he left for work the next day, Monday, March 23, it appeared someone was cleaning inside Gretchen Anthony’s garage. The neighbor said he smelled water and chemicals.

Another neighbor’s security video showed David Anthony’s truck leaving the home that morning.

The alleged murder follows Anthony having been arrested a week earlier on the evening of March 14 at the Ocean Mall on Singer Island. According to a police report, Anthony had been observed acting suspiciously, approaching teenage girls about 15 years old, pacing back and forth and sweating profusely.

Upon being approached by Riviera Beach police that evening, Anthony repeatedly slammed the door of the pickup truck on a female officer’s arm. A week later the man went to his estranged wife’s house in Abacoa where it is believed he killed her, less than a month after she filed for divorce from her husband of five years.

A judge on Thursday denied bond for Anthony, who has been extradited to Florida. 

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