An affair, a death and an insurance payout: Trial begins for Denver man charged with killing wife in 2015 – The Denver Post

Stacy Feldman, who was murdered in 2015. Her husband Robert Feldman has been accused of killing her. (Photo via Facebook)

A long-awaited murder trial began Wednesday for a Denver man accused of killing his wife hours after she discovered he’d carried on an extramarital affair — and who then collected a $750,000 insurance payout.

Robert “Bob” Feldman, 58, is standing trial in Denver District Court on a first-degree murder charge in the death of his wife, 44-year-old Stacy Feldman, who died at their south Denver home on March 1, 2015.

Prosecutors told jurors Wednesday that Robert Feldman strangled or suffocated his wife after she learned about the affair. Feldman then picked up his young children from school — an hour late — and took them to a church carnival before returning home and calling 911, telling operators he’d just discovered his wife unresponsive in the bathtub with the water running.

“The firefighters noticed there was no water on the floor,” Senior Chief Deputy District Attorney Maggie Conboy said of the first responders to the 911 call.

Feldman’s defense attorneys — whom he’d planned to pay with the insurance money from his wife’s death — told jurors that Stacy Feldman had a long history of medical problems, including an enlarged heart, and just happened to drop dead in the shower within hours of learning about her husband’s affair.

Robert Feldman (Denver District Attorney’s Office)

“On this particular day, she was ill,” attorney Kelly Schulten said. “…She was chronically sick. And these things make a difference in a human’s life and to a human’s body.”

Stacy Feldman’s death was not ruled a homicide by the Denver medical examiner’s office; pathologists could not pinpoint a cause of death. Her death was also not initially investigated as a homicide by Denver police until they learned about Robert Feldman’s affair months later.

The $750,000 insurance policy was five years old, Schulten said, and Robert Feldman had carried out previous affairs; the latest was nothing special, she told jurors.

“We are not going to hear any evidence that Stacy said anything to Bob about (the affair) on this day at all,” Schulten said. “We’re not going to hear that Stacy confronted Bob, at all. We’re not going to hear that Stacy was even upset about it, at all.”

Stacy Feldman learned about the affair when a woman Robert Feldman met on the dating service Tinder emailed Stacy to ask if she was divorced or separated from her husband. Robert Feldman had told the woman he was separated from his wife and looking for a long-term relationship before they’d had sex a few days prior, but she’d become suspicious when he then blew her off. He also gave the woman a fake last name.

Stacy Feldman and the woman spoke around 8:45 a.m. that morning, and Stacy told the woman, a stranger, that she was “done” with Robert Feldman, Conboy said. Stacy sent a text message to a friend at 10 a.m. and was supposed to pick up her children from school at noon, but never showed.

The children stayed with an administrator until 1 p.m., when Robert Feldman arrived, collected his children and took them to the church carnival. Robert Feldman initially told police he’d left the house at 8:30 a.m. that day and did not return until about 3 p.m., when he discovered his wife in the bathtub. He later changed his account to say he’d returned home for a few minutes to change clothes and work out, but claimed he did not speak to his wife when he stopped by.

He also claimed his wife had eaten a marijuana edible and had stayed home sick from work before she died, but those claims were false, Conboy said.

During a nearly 2-year-long investigation, police and prosecutors brought in a specialist in domestic violence, strangulation and suffocation who looked at photos of Stacy Feldman’s body and determined her injuries showed she had been killed, Conboy said.

“You will hear that Stacy Feldman’s body was covered in bruises, abrasions and multiple blunt force trauma,” she told jurors.

Stacy Feldman’s autopsy was the first the Denver pathologist had ever conducted by herself and she was still under the supervision of another examiner, Conboy said. The outside expert’s opinion should carry more weight, she suggested.

But Schulten said none of the injuries on Stacy Feldman’s body were fatal, and argued the Denver medical examiner’s office ruled Stacy Feldman’s death undetermined for good reason: the woman’s underlying medical conditions made it impossible to conclusively say she was killed.

“We have an undetermined death, and unverified opinion, and ultimately what this does is it undermines our entire system,” Schulten told jurors. She also pointed out that Robert Feldman had a life insurance policy on himself, as well as on his wife.

In 2019, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Feldman could use $550,000 of the $750,000 he received from his wife’s life insurance policy to pay his defense attorneys, even though the guardian of his two young children argued they should get the funds.

The trial is expected to last two weeks.