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Early in the morning on July 16, 2016, emergency personnel raced to a home in Matthews, North Carolina, a suburb of Charlotte.
Kimberly Reps, 48, had called 911 to report that she and her husband, Robert “Rob” Reps, 54, had been shot by an intruder.
In the house, deputies found Kimberly on the floor bleeding. Rob was lying in the master bedroom on the bed, where he struggled to breathe.
“He sustained a gunshot wound to the forehead,” Union County District Attorney Trey Robison informed Snapped, broadcast on Sundays at 6/5c p.m. on Oxygen.
Union County Sheriff’s Deputy Roger Wilds recalled the grim scene. “It was a lot of blood… and brain matter,” he said.
The victims were rushed to the hospital. Rob died on the way there.
Who was Rob Reps?
Rob was born in 1961 in Detroit and raised in Georgia. After completing his college education, Rob pursued a career in prosthetics, driven by his desire to assist others by creating artificial limbs for those in need.
In 1991, he got married, and the couple had two daughters before eventually divorcing. Rob subsequently entered a new relationship with Lynn Roberts, who worked alongside him in billing, but they broke up after 13 years.
Shortly after that breakup, Rob met Kimberly Polk, who was very outgoing. “She was athletic and smart,”her friend Tonia Sacco told Snapped.
Kimberly, originally from North Carolina, had been married twice and was a mother of two. While her first marriage ended on friendly terms, her second one concluded amidst difficulties.
After a fast-moving romance, Rob and Kimberly tied the knot. And just six months later, Rob was dead from a gunshot.
Investigators look for leads
Detectives swabbed the crime scene for DNA and dusted for prints. They noted no signs of forced entry or valuables missing.
Union County Assistant District Attorney Mary Beth Usher stated, “This was not a case of a home invasion. It involved someone purposefully targeting Rob and/or Kimberly to shoot and kill.”
While she was in the hospital, Kimberly gave her account of the crime. She said she’d been awakened by a noise.
According to Union County Sheriff’s Detective Emily Tetlow, Kimberly described “a white male suspect dressed entirely in black, including a black hat, standing over her.”
Kimberly added that she “sat up in the room and had reached out towards this person,” said Brian Huncke, former Union County Sheriff’s Captain. “That’s when she felt pain in her shoulder.”
Investigators canvassed neighbors. Someone who’d been exercising outside at the same time as the 911 call reported seeing no one in the area.
Detectives interviewed Roberts. Her ironclad alibi cleared her as a possible suspect.
Rob Reps’ character becomes a focus
Investigators focused on learning more about Rob. Some witnesses said that alcohol brought out his dark side.
“One of his close friends told investigators that from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. he’s one of the nicest guys that you could ever be around,” said Robison. “But when he began drinking in the evenings that he would become belligerent.”
That drove a wedge between him and Kimberly. “Everyone that knew Rob described him as an alcoholic,” Kelly Kelso, Kimberly’s sister, told Snapped.
His drinking problem wasn’t the only source of tension between him and Kimberly, according to Rob’s friends and family.
“Rob went on a guy’s trip twice a year — during the spring, then the fall, to St. Martin,” said Roberts.
“Kimberly did not like the St. Martin trips because they would gamble and they would drink and they would have a big time,” said Robison.
And that “big time” included other women. “Kimberly had told me about finding the receipt for a ring and a note, and she confronted Rob,” said Kelso.
For investigators, the fact that Kimberly discovered that her newlywed husband was involved with another woman would have given her plenty of motive to kill Rob, according to Snapped.
Detectives dig deeper at crime scene
Investigators obtained a warrant to search the couple’s home to try to confirm Kimberly’s story about sitting up when she was shot.
Forensic evidence, including ballistics and trajectory analysis, refuted her claim. Had she been upright, the bullet would have entered the wall. Instead, it went down through the mattress.
That detail raised a red flag, as did the fact that the murder weapon was Rob’s own gun. “It seemed odd that somebody would have potentially broken into this home and then shot him with his own firearm,” said Usher.
A casing found in the murder weapon provided another clue. It suggested that it malfunctioned or that whoever shot it didn’t have a firm grip on it, said Huncke.
The evidence led detectives to reconsider Kimberly’s story of an intruder. “Our theory was that she had shot herself in order to make it appear that she was also a victim of some sort of home invasion,” said Robison.
Investigators confront Kimberly Reps
Two days into the investigation, Kimberly emerged as the prime suspect. She didn’t know that when she was finally well enough to come to the sheriff’s office to be interviewed about what had happened.
“When she was talking about Robert in the interview, she actually referred to him as a Prince Charming,” said Tetlow.
When Rob’s murder came up, Kimberly stuck to her original story. But that changed when detectives confronted her with their ballistics and trajectory evidence.
“She admitted to shooting her husband and then shooting herself,” said Huncke.
When asked why, Kimberly said there was more to it than simple jealousy.
“There was also a claim of sexual abuse and that Robert was drunk almost every single night that they were married, and she just couldn’t take it anymore,” said Tetlow.
Finding the ring and the love letter from another woman, which confirmed to her that her husband was having an affair, was the last straw. “That’s when she snapped,” said Usher.
Kimberly Reps charged with killing Rob Reps
Kimberly was charged with first-degree murder. Prosecutors knew her claims of abuse would be the core of her defense. So investigators dug deeper.
“Based off of our interviews with other family members and friends… there was no evidence of physical abuse,” said Robison.
“I know the signs of abuse, I do,” Rob’s friend Sallie Connelly told Snapped. “I’d never seen it once with Rob.”
“The 911 call records didn’t indicate any kind of domestic violence or violence at all at the home,” said former WSOC reporter Liz Foster.
Rob’s autopsy and blood toxicology report also cast doubt on Kimberly’s account of Rob’s alcoholism. “We were getting this whole, like, he’s an alcoholic thing,” said Usher. “He had no alcohol in the system at the time of death.”
Instead of risking exoneration, the state offered Kimberly a plea deal — a strategy they discussed with Rob’s adult daughters.
Kimberly pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 to 25 years. The decision left two sides divided.
“Kimberly is a survivor,” said Kelso. “I believe she barely survived Rob Reps.”
Rob’s ex-girlfriend had a different opinion. “She should have spent the rest of her life in jail,” said Roberts.
Snapped airs Sundays at 6/5c p.m. on Oxygen.
