A Valrico man was arrested after deputies said he tried to stage his wife's murder as a suicide.
Colin J. Maloney, 39, is facing charges of second-degree murder in the death of his wife, 38-year-old Felicia Maloney.
Detectives said Maloney called 911 in the morning hours of March 18 to request help for his wife, saying that he came into the bedroom and found her unresponsive.
The report said Maloney told the 911 operator that his wife was "non-responsive, her jaw is clenched and she's a little blue." He said he came into the bedroom and found her barely breathing, so he started performing CPR.
Detectives said Maloney never told the operator his wife had hanged herself from a bed support using an electrical cord.
Emergency crews arrived and began giving advance life support. They worked on her for about 20 minutes inside the home, then brought her out into an ambulance.
A deputy accompanied the EMS personnel into the ambulance. One of the EMS technicians noticed several ligature marks on the victim's neck, the report said.
Two deputies inside the house saw the couple's 8-year-old son playing with a white cord, which he had taken out of the kitchen trash can, the report said.
Maloney then asked the deputies if they saw what his son was doing, took out the cord and said, "You see, this is what she used to hang herself."
Investigators said Maloney's statements about his wife's death did not match the physical evidence.
The medical examiner determined the cause of death to be ligature strangulation, and that Felicia Maloney's neck had several horizontal ligature marks, which investigators said is inconsistent with suicide by hanging.
The manner of death was ruled as homicide.
A forensic investigators also determined that it was "extremely unlikely" Maloney had hanged herself with either the bed board or the electrical cord, the report said.
Maloney was arrested on Friday at the Cracker Barrel on State Road 60 in Valrico. He was taken into custody without incident.