Macomb Woman Accused Of Killing Her Husband In February Arrested In June

A Macomb woman was arrested on a first-degree murder charge in the death of her husband. 

Deputies said he was killed February 1, but Katie Lee, a special education teacher, wasn't arrested until Wednesday. Investigators said they started to see holes in Lee's story from day one.

"Some of the stories that the wife was telling us wasn't matching up to some of the evidence we were seeing in the scene," Pottawatomie County Undersheriff J.T. Palmer said.

James Lee was shot in the chest and killed in his home just before 6 a.m. on February 1, and his stepdaughter called 911. 

The Pottawatomie County sheriff's office said Katie Lee's story started falling apart when they answered the call.

"She basically told us like 3 different stories. One was an accident, one was the gun just went off and one was domestic violence," Palmer said.

One of the first red flags he noticed was the lack of a gun in the home.

"We knew there were weapons in the house because we'd been there before," Palmer said.

The Pottawatomie County sheriff's deputies were called several times before due to loud fights between the couple.

Investigators think Katie Lee's 18-year-old son threw the firearm went into a nearby pond.

"He said he didn't know why, he was just trying to protect his mom because he really didn't know what happened," Palmer said.

Palmer said another tell-tale sign something was off was that the home security cameras were not hooked up to anything.

"The DVR was missing, and so we were told the DVR was broke and that he had taken it to get it fixed," he said. "We could tell the DVR had been freshly moved because of the dust and the cable it had been recently unhooked."

Lee eventually admitted to putting the DVR in a laundry basket under some clothes. Reports said she told investigators it's because the making made a weird noise. 

OSBI spent the last three months trying to recover that footage. 

The arrest affidavit says the security footage showed Katie Lee adjust the bedroom camera and pointed it toward the bedroom floor. The footage also showed the suspect walked around her home with the gun and she fired some rounds outside into the sky. 

In the footage, Katie Lee then "walks to the edge of the couch, stops, removes a gun magazine from her left pocket and loads the magazine into the gun." 

Palmer said a muzzle flash and a dust cloud can be seen, but there's no evidence of the victim attacking his wife.

"The video is a telling tale of exactly what happened. Her movements, what she did before and after it just does not add up to being self-defense," said Palmer

It's not clear if the son will be charged for getting rid of the gun.