“I HAD the perfect husband, up until the day he tried to kill me.”
“Looking back on things now, I think there were some red flags that started to display themselves after we got married,” Kelly Sutliff told PopCrimeTV. “But up until then, there really weren’t many red flags.
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“He seemed to come off completely authentic, and really wanted me to be authentic as well.
“He really presented[himself] as Prince Charming. Everything I was looking for, he checked off every single box; he was really kind, he was generous, he was kind to other people and he really seemed to love me.”
Kelly met Chris through the dating app Bumble back in August 2018. She described him as being “very attractive”.
“He seemed like a guy who was really in touch with his feelings and could understand other people’s emotions as well. He described himself as an empath.”
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Little did she know, she would end up running for her life.
Kelly, now 43 and a psychotherapist, had her first date with Chris, who was three years her junior, in Morristown, New Jersey, a week after they matched online.
He told her he was a US Army veteran and had since worked as a government contractor.
The couple then embarked on a whirlwind romance.
Chris told Kelly he loved her after a few weeks of dating. She recalled: “My gut was saying, ‘maybe something isn’t right here?’ But I rationalised it because I really wanted this man to be who I thought he was.”
In November 2018, Chris moved in with Kelly and then proposed a month later.
Completely won over by his charm, Kelly says she “got swept up” in their wedding plans, which were booked for an intimate ceremony in Maui in January 2019.
They discussed having children – Chris already had an eight-year-old son from a previous relationship – but they decided against it so they could travel the world together as a twosome.
Kelly said: “I truly thought like he was going to be my husband for the rest of my life.”
Mysterious illness
Soon after their honeymoon, Kelly fell ill. Her skin broke out in hives, then her general health deteriorated quickly.
Initially, she thought it was linked to a virus she had the previous summer when on holiday in Croatia, but her symptoms got worse – she felt nauseous, headachy and exhausted.
At one point, her legs gave way and she collapsed on the stairs. She was rushed to the hospital to check for a blood clot, thankfully, she didn’t have one.
The fatigue progressed, and she was spending days in bed, unable to get up.
Chris was the doting husband, going food shopping, cooking meals, making sure she stayed hydrated.
Kelly said: “In taking care of me, he acted like the best husband ever. He kept saying he would make sure I was going to get better.”
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Secrets exposed
But in December 2019, everything changed when Chris fell asleep next to Kelly, clutching his phone.
Kelly took this opportunity to look through his messages, checking Instagram first.
She found explicit pictures and texts from another woman.
But the messages were worse. Chris had told the woman that his wife was a drug addict and alcoholic, whom he no longer loved.
Kelly described Chris’ behaviour as demeaning and she started questioning who he really was.
“I thought, ‘I don’t know who this man is, because my husband would never do something like that.’ I don’t know who I’m married to,” she recalled.
When Chris woke, Kelly confronted him and showed him the copy of texts she had.
She then asked him to leave and go stay with his mum, be he refused, desperate to know if this was the end of their marriage.
Then at 6pm, Chris’ behaviour darkened. He became violent.
Returning from spending the afternoon at her sister’s house, Kelly walked in to find Chris standing naked, covered in blood, brandishing a military knife. He had cut himself with the knife and yelled abuse into her face.
His eyes were black…It was the scariest thing I’ve seen in my life
Kelly
In a turn of events, Chris set out to make it look like Kelly was trying to murder him.
Over the next 45 minutes, he wrecked their home and physically assaulted Kelly.
Recalling the attack, Kelly explained how Chris pinned her down by her neck and legs and told her she would watch as he destroyed their home, before killing her.
She tried to call 911 several times, but at each attempt, he wrestled the phone from her.
Once, he got hold of the phone and told the operator everything was fine. But the operator didn’t believe him and traced the address before dispatching the police.
During this time, Kelly put her dog, Chester, in the basement for safety before running out of the house and banging on a neighbour’s door, who then rang for the emergency services.
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“As I stood in their [neighbours’] foyer, I looked out and saw Chris smearing his blood over the bay window,” she said in the documentary. “And then I saw Chris walking towards the basement, because that’s where I hid Chester.”
Kelly risked her own life for her dog and went back to the house whilst Chris was on a rampage.
“I was not going to let that man kill my dog,” she said. “There was no way in hell, he was going to lay a hand on that dog. The dog was everything to me.”
Going back inside, Kelly saw the basement door halfway open and Chester sitting outside it – alive.
“I slammed the basement door shut,” she said. “And I heard Chris screaming. I looked to my right, and saw the police, and I started screaming ‘please help me.'”
Blood everywhere
Detective David Littman was among the first responders, and he explains what he walked into in the ID Discovery series Toxic.
The policeman said, “Chris was covered in blood and muttering incoherently. He was on some kind of rant, how he was in the war, how he killed people. He refused to follow the police’s demands but was eventually handcuffed.
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“I saw every room was destroyed. There was blood on the walls, TVs pulled off the wall, tables overturned, the master bedroom was destroyed. It was probably one of the worst scenes I had ever seen.”
But Kelly had survived.
As for Chris, he was taken to a Veterans’ Affairs hospital and treated for his wounds before being charged with aggravated assault by strangulation, criminal mischief, and possession of a deadly weapon.
He was able to walk out of jail the same day due to a law in New Jersey that eliminates bail for first-time offenders.
Drug and rape allegations
That evening, Kelly briefly popped home to get some clothes and found her husband’s phone on the floor.
She said it contained chilling pictures of him masturbating next to her while she was sleeping. In others, he was smiling ominously as she slept soundly with her head on the pillow. In a video, it showed him putting something under her nose while she was sprawled on the bed, incapacitated.
Kelly said it “didn’t look like I was sleeping naturally at all. It was as if I was drugged”.
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And her worst fears were confirmed true when a stash of pills Kelly had never seen before was found. According to Kelly, the medications tamoxifen and mammoth, which are normally used to treat people with breast cancer, caused the exact symptoms she’d experienced when she was sick, including causing people’s legs to give way.
In an even darker turn of events, Kelly questioned whether Chris might have sexually assaulted her while she was allegedly drugged.
She told police about a time during their honeymoon when she suddenly woke to find her husband in the midst of having intercourse with her.
She asked Chris what he was doing, and he said he thought she was again.
She told him to never do that to her again.
After she heard about the pills, which she suspects he had slipped into her food and drink, she thinks that she was drugged that night.
Speaking to The Daily Mail, Kelly said: It’s so painful to discover that someone who is supposed to love you and protect you has violated and betrayed you in such a horrific way.”
Domestic abuse – how to get help
DOMESTIC abuse can affect anyone – including men – and does not always involve physical violence.
Here are some signs that you could be in an abusive relationship:
- Emotional abuse – Including being belittled, blamed for the abuse – gaslighting – being isolated from family and friends, having no control over your finances, what you where and who you speak to
- Threats and intimidation – Some partners might threaten to kill or hurt you, destroy your belongings, stalk or harass you
- Physical abuse – This can range from slapping or hitting to being shoved over, choked or bitten.
- Sexual abuse – Being touched in a way you do not want to be touched, hurt during sex, pressured into sex or forced to have sex when you do not consent.
If any of the above apply to you or a friend, you can call these numbers:
Remember, you are not alone.
1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men will experience domestic abuse over the course of their lifetime.
Every 30 seconds the police receive a call for help relating to domestic abuse.
Justice thwarted
There was a year-long investigation into the alleged sexual assaults. However, soon after he was arrested, Hanover Township PD handed back Chris’ phone, and the suspected images were deleted before the police were granted a search warrant.
No evidence of either the photos or Kelly being drugged was found, and too much time had passed for medical tests to be carried out to show the medication in her system.
Detective David added, “Every doctor that I spoke to said that whatever Kelly experienced and described, those drugs would have had an effect on her like that. But trying to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt is extremely hard, because I don’t have a blood test to prove that she was given those drugs.”
He was also disappointed that the prosecutor’s office hadn’t pursued charges for sexual assault, but was hopeful that the other charges against Chris would likely end up with him in jail.
His hopes for Chris to get time were dashed.
In October 2023, Chris accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to just three years’ probation on aggravated assault by strangulation charges.
Kelly said, “I felt abused by the criminal justice system. It makes me sick to my stomach that Chris did what he did, and still kept his freedom.”
When Kelly stood up and delivered her impact statement, she told the court she could’ve died that night.
“He was going to kill me, but I survived. There is going to come a day when he does kill someone, and the blood will be on the system’s hands,” she said.
