ANAHUAC, Texas – In December, Sarah Hartsfield told a friend that her husband and marriage had become a “nightmare” and that she had a plan to get out, according to private Facebook messages the friend provided to NBC News.
Weeks later, the husband was dead; Hartsfield, a former Army sergeant, was charged with first-degree murder; and authorities in Minnesota had decided to re-examine the death of a former partner who they had previously said Hartsfield killed in self-defense in 2018.
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In a Dec. 19 message, Hartsfield, 48, called her husband, Joseph Hartsfield, 46, an “empty person” and derided his “financial irresponsibility.”
“I’ve paid for everything to the point I have nothing left,” she said. “He was just looking for a meal ticket and way back to a lifestyle he could never attain on his own,” she wrote in the messages, which NBC News confirmed came from an account that belonged to Hartsfield.
Read the full report from NBC News.