Man tells 911 he killed cancer-stricken wife

LONDON, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky man called 911 just minutes after killing his wife, sobbing and confessing to a dispatcher that he fatally shot the cancer-stricken woman, and asking to take a last look at her before he is arrested, according to recordings released Thursday.

Ernest Chris Chumbley, 48, cries throughout the 16-minute call placed around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday and says he shot the woman twice in the face with a .32-caliber handgun in their southeastern Kentucky home. He said in a jailhouse interview after the shooting that he shot his wife to end her pain from terminal breast cancer.

"Give me police, I'm under arrest," Chumbley says on the call.

Chumbley has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge and is being held in jail on a $200,000 bond. Police found 44-year-old Virginia Chumbley's body in the bedroom when they arrived.

Defense attorney Kelly Ridings said Thursday that it was too early in the case to comment. Chumbley has a court hearing on Tuesday.

Chumbley left the gun in the bedroom and told police he was unarmed. He told the 911 dispatcher that his wife was a cancer patient and was supposed to go to the doctor the next day.

"Two shots, that's all I did to her," he said.

Near the end of the call, he asks the dispatcher if he can go to his wife's body in the bedroom, but he is told not to move.

"Can I go see her? I want to go see my wife," he said, but then agreed not to go to the bedroom.

Chumbley told WKYT-TV from jail that his wife told him she wanted him to end her pain, and he told her he could offer her "what the doctor gave you."

"She said "No, I want you to stop my pain for good,"' Chumbley told the news station.

Neighbors in the small subdivision near the Appalachian foothills said that the husband and wife were a happy couple, but that Virginia Chumbley's cancer had taken a harsh toll in recent years.