Wife Who Stabbed Stepdad Turned Husband Says She Didn’t Mean to Kill Him
Speaking publicly for the first time since fatally stabbing her husband, Danielle Redlick testified in Orlando on Tuesday morning that she never meant to kill Michael Redlick, her partner of nearly two decades and her step-father before that.
Instead, Danielle said she stabbed her husband in self-defense as he attempted to “smother her to death” at their Florida home on Jan. 11, 2019, with her head pinned against the kitchen counter and his hand gripping her nose and mouth.
Danielle testified that she was only able to escape her husband’s grip by stabbing him in the shoulder with a kitchen knife, which disoriented him enough for her to scamper away.
Danielle initially said in a 911 call that her husband’s death was from a heart attack, before later telling a detective that Michael must have stabbed himself, according to an arrest report. While she now admits to the stabbing, the prosecution, which is attempting to convict her on a murder charge, doesn’t buy her claim of what happened next.
Wife Stabbed Husband to Death After He Joked About Hiding the Knives: Cops
Assistant State Attorney Sean Wiggins had previously told jurors that Danielle purposefully stabbed Michael and left him to die on the kitchen floor as she retired to her bedroom, where she scrolled a dating app and erased phone messages. Then, Wiggins claims, she attempted to bleach the scene, all before she called 911 more than 11 hours later.
Florida Wife Scrolled Dating App After Fatally Stabbing Hubby, Prosecutors Allege
Testifying on Tuesday, Danielle, who broke into tears at one point, said that she loved her husband and never meant to kill him. She said that after stabbing Michael, she ran and hid in the master bathroom of their $1 million lakefront home in Winter Park, and that it had never occurred to her that a stab to the shoulder could be fatal.
So, when Danielle returned to the kitchen later that night, she said she thought her husband was just “being dramatic” as he lay in a pool of blood. She claims the situation became real for her when she called out his name and he didn’t respond. She then tried to save him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to no avail, which prompted her to touch his face and then place her head on his chest. There was no heart-beat. Michael Redlick was dead at 65.
“My heart dropped at that point and I started thinking, ‘what the heck,’ and I see the blood,” Danielle said. “I’m glancing around for my phone and I’m just looking at him and trying to figure it out and I’m thinking, ‘oh my gosh, did he die?’”
This is when Danielle says she went into “shock” and began making a “series of really bad decisions.”
Her first mistake, Danielle testified, was not calling 911 immediately. She said she was in such a panic that she dialed “911-911” but, when the call didn’t go through, she began contemplating suicide instead of calling back. She looked up how to kill herself by slitting her wrists and tried it, but the thought of her children stopped her.
“I heard something saying, ‘not like this Danielle, not like this,’” she said. “Your kids can’t lose both of their parents.”
Then, she said, she wept as she laid with her husband’s corpse, first on the ground and then on a brown chair that she’d moved his corpse onto, until she fell asleep.
Danielle testified that after realizing Michael was dead she eventually checked and deleted phone messages from another man she’d been seeing, as well as messages between her and Michael. But she denied the prosecution's claim that she also spent time on a dating app.
After Danielle successfully called 911 on the morning of Jan. 12, police arrived and found Michael’s body along with blood and cleaning supplies spread throughout the house, Wiggins had previously told jurors in his opening statement last week, in which he said the house resembled a scene from a horror movie.
In addition to offering her recollection of the stabbing, Danielle also described her relationship with Michael—which began when he became her stepfather, marrying her mother three months before she died of breast cancer. Danielle was 20 at the time.
Danielle, now 48, became intimate with her stepdad and future husband before turning 21 after he asked for her help raising her little sister, then 16, in his home. He’d visit Danielle often at a bar she worked at and they would attend concerts together, Danielle said.
She described the beginning of the relationship as mostly a happy time, despite her family’s objections to her dating her mother’s widower. The couple eventually married and moved into a riverfront home on the Mississippi River while Michael was working as an executive for the Memphis Grizzlies, a NBA team.
While Danielle mostly painted a positive picture of their early years together, she also said Michael showed some abusive tendencies from early on in their relationship and that those had become worse over the last decade. The first instance of abuse, she said, came when she and Michael ran into an ex-boyfriend of hers at a concert in Ohio and then argued after the show. Michael told her that she would have rather attended with her former flame and she quipped back, “At least he isn’t Jewish and cheap.” Danielle said Michael responded by slapping her in the face—the first time he physically abused her.
Similar incidents would occur off and on for years, she said, even after the couple’s two children were born. But Danielle said that she never left “because there was still a lot of good,” and she knew that Michael loved her.
But the abuse worsened as Michael got older, Danielle said. She testified that they their sex life slowed down as Michael struggled with erectile dysfunction. After Viagra stopped working for him, she said he began taking shots of testosterone that made him stronger and more “attractive,” but also more abusive.
Danielle said that both she and her husband had been unfaithful, and that they had each moved out and then back in at different points. In 2018, Danielle filed for divorce but the couple continued to spend time together and Michael managed to avoid receiving the papers including with her help on one occasion when she ignored a process server who came to their front door.
Laying in bed together that afternoon, Danielle says Michael told her he “loved his wife” and “didn’t want to be with another woman.”
But all those years of dysfunction, infidelity and abuse culminated on the night of the stabbing, Danielle said. And while she remains heartbroken with the result, she testified that she didn’t feel she overreacted by stabbing her husband, since she felt her own life was in danger.
“I didn’t like the end result, of course,” she said. “I never wanted him to be dead.”
Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.
Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now.
