Pryor Woman Arrested In 2009 Murder Of Husband

NewsOn6.com

PRYOR, Oklahoma – A woman wanted in the murder of her husband, Michael Cobb, was arrested Monday morning.

Wendy Cobb was picked up near Tulsa and booked into Mayes County Jail, authorities said.

Michael Cobb was killed in a house fire April 28, 2009. Wendy Cobb's boyfriend, 24-year-old Nicholas Shires of Tulsa, was previously charged with first-degree murder in connection to the Osage firefighter's death.

04/29/2009 Related Story: Mayes County Man Dies In House Fire

According to the arrest affidavit, Shires is suspected of beating Michael Cobb unconscious outside his home and then bringing the body back inside where he sparked the blaze using gasoline.

According to court documents, Michael Cobb's body was found in the burned out remnants of his home by some of his fellow volunteer firefighters.  One of the firefighters had last seen Cobb earlier that evening at a fire department meeting, when Cobb had said he was heading home to watch television.

According to the warrant for her arrest, Wendy Cobb and the man charged with actually committing the murder, Nicholas Shires, met while working at the same company in Catoosa in 2008. 

In a written statement, Shires says he and Cobb became lovers while Cobb was still married to the victim.  In the statement Shires says Wendy Cobb approached him in early 2009 about finding someone to kill her husband.  He claims she offered to pay 10- to 20-thousand dollars for the crime, depending on how much money she got from either the home or life insurance settlement.

Shires says in the statement that he never looked for someone else to commit the murder and eventually it became understood that he would do it.  He says Cobb brought him a gun and wanted him to "just shoot him."  But Shires says he decided not to use a gun and not to murder Cobb's husband on the agreed upon night.

Eventually, according to his statement, Shires agreed to wait for Cobb's husband to come home and attack him in the house.  Shires claims that Cobb sent her older son out of town and took her younger children to a pizza place on the night she and Shires had set for the murder.

In his statement, Shires says Michael Cobb came into the house that night and he swung a bat at Cobb but missed.  He claims Cobb ran into the yard where Shires chased him and hit him on the head, then dragged him back into the house, poured two cans of gasoline inside and set it on fire.

He then went to his mother's house where he says he called Wendy Cobb and told her to meet him there.  According to his statement, when she arrived she kissed him and said, "Thank you, I love you, talk to you later."

Shires concludes his statement by saying he had just a few conversations with Wendy Cobb after that night, and that the last time he spoke with her was Christmas eve of 2009.