A Maple Grove man was charged with murder Tuesday after police discovered his wife’s body in a crawl-space under their home.
Joshua Fury, 28, reported his wife missing April 30. At the time he told officers she was gone when he returned from work, with her cellphone left behind on their kitchen counter, according to the criminal complaint filed in Hennepin County District Court.
He reportedly said he last saw her earlier that day while she was talking on the phone with her mother and getting ready to leave on a walk.
Law enforcement conducted an extensive search of the area, including canvasing the neighborhood as well as woods and lakes and conducting helicopter flyovers.
During their efforts, they talked to family and friends, several of whom reported marital problems between between the couple. The woman’s mother said her daughter had planned to leave Fury, charges say.
A subsequent search of the couple’s home on the 11000 block of Red Fox Drive in Maple Grove, aided by K9s trained to detect human remains, uncovered the woman’s body early Saturday morning in a lower-level crawl space, the complaint said.
It took officers hours to exhume it, charges say.
Before he was arrested, Fury insisted he had not harmed his wife and tried to blame her ex-boyfriend, but then admitted to killing her once he was in custody, the complaint said.
He said he strangled her during an argument about her leaving him, placed a plastic bag over her head, and then dug a hole in the crawl space, where he subsequently buried her body, charges say. He reportedly went on to say that he suffers from depression and has attempted suicide in the past.
Given the “extremely violent nature of the offense,” the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office indicated it intended to request a $2 million bail amount in a statement issued by the office Tuesday.
Fury faces one count of second-degree murder. He has no prior criminal record in Minnesota.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office declined to provide the victim’s name, but property records list Joshua and Maria Fury as the owners of the property searched by law enforcement.
The initials of the victim, which were included in the criminal complaint, are M.F.
Fury’s attorney, Patrick Tamburino, could not be immediately reached for comment.