Wisconsin man confesses to strangling wife, throwing body in dumpster 13 years after he reported her missing
A Wisconsin man has confessed to the murder of his wife, 13 years to the day he first reported her missing.
On August 4, at approximately 1:35 p.m., Keith Alan Comfort, 37, of Lake Geneva, walked into the City of Lake Geneva Police Department and requested to speak with an officer regarding a missing person, according to a press release.
During a subsequent interview, Comfort implicated himself in the death of his wife Megan Nicole Shultz, 24, who he had reported missing to the Columbia Missouri Police Department on the same day in 2006.
Detailing the events of the fateful day, Comfort explained that he had been at work when his wife called him "in hysterics" and claimed she had just ripped someone off in a drug deal.
After the call, he said a colleague dropped him back to his home on Amelia Street, where he found his Shultz "frantic, yelling, and swinging" her arms at him.
He told the officer that he initially grabbed her by the arms, before grabbing her neck, forcing her to the ground, and strangling her. He said, when he realized she had stopped breathing, he placed her body in a black trash bag and threw it in a shared dumpster in their apartment complex.
Comfort reported the 24-year-old missing the next day to the Columbia Police Department after her mother, Debra, started questioning him about her whereabouts and claimed she had stormed out of their house after an argument and never returned.
He said his wife was 5'9'', 120 pounds with green eyes, and had been wearing a pink tank top and white Capri pants with nothing on her feet when she vanished out the front door without a trace. He said they shared a young daughter, which had made her sudden departure even more puzzling.
At the time, detectives had noticed that he had a bruise and scratch on his bicep, but he explained it away by stating he had sustained the wounds during his fight with Shultz.
Three weeks later, as officers continued a futile search for Shultz, Comfort filed for divorce. Detectives insisted the case was not a criminal matter and that the 37-year-old was not under suspicion.
But Debra had always doubted her son-in-law. "I knew he had killed her," she told the Columbia Missourian. "But I couldn’t prove it. I hired detectives, I talked to bounty hunters and retired marshals," she said. "I searched from one end of the country to the other. That was very frustrating for many years. I just felt like something had happened in that apartment that one fateful night, and it did. Her life ended in that apartment on Amelia Street."
Following Comfort's confession, she says she now hopes to get custody of her granddaughter, who she hasn't seen in more than a decade because the 37-year-old was granted full custody of the child and had moved out of the state.
Comfort is being held at the Walworth County Jail pending extradition on a $1 million cash bond.
The investigation has been turned over to Columbia Police detectives who arrived at the City of Lake Geneva.