A man recently died in Alabama from a heart attack while trying to discard his girlfriend’s body after fatally strangling her, according to authorities.
At the center of the unusually macabre case was Daniel Robbins, 44, and Jessica Folds, 47.
Chambers county sheriff’s deputies reportedly found Robbins and Folds dead next to each other on the morning of 10 June in a wooded area near an abandoned vehicle in the town of Lanett.
The Chambers sheriff’s office said in a statement that officials sent the bodies to the Alabama department of forensic science for autopsies.
Investigators were subsequently reported to have found that Robbins, described as being from Georgia, and Folds – said to be from Lanett – had been in a relationship before her death. He allegedly killed her before he died while trying to hide her body, according to investigators.
“He died of a heart attack while doing it,” said a local district attorney, Mike Segrest, according to the Alabama news outlet AL.com, which first reported on the findings.
“Their bodies were right there together.”
Segrest said the investigation by local and state law enforcement, combined with autopsy results, determined that Folds “was strangled” – and “it appears [Robbins] was attempting to dispose of [her] body in a remote location” when he died.
Segrest said the truck near the bodies of Robbins and Folds was still running and the driver’s side door was open when deputies arrived to find them.
The tailgate was down, he said to AL.com, and there were drag marks in the dirt into the woods where the couple were found.
Segrest told the outlet that investigators suspected Robbins killed Folds as an act of domestic violence. The prosecutor added that he believed everything had happened the previous night, citing the fact that the truck was still running.
Local news outlets reported that Folds was the mother of three adult sons. An obituary said she “touched the lives of many with her heart of gold, deep love for everyone, and a smile that brightened the world”.
Robbins’s survivors included a daughter, according to his obituary.
