North Carolina woman charged in husband’s shooting death. Investigators said her account changed over time and phone searches raised new questions months after the killing.
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. — A Huntersville woman has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of her husband after police said she first described his death as a suicide, then later said he was shot during a struggle over a gun inside the couple’s home.
Susan Michelle Perry, 54, is accused in the death of Robert Joseph “Joe” Perry, 58, who was found with a gunshot wound to the chest on Nov. 10, 2025, at the couple’s house on New Oak Lane north of Charlotte. The case drew renewed attention when investigators said phone data, reinterviews and a medical examiner’s findings undercut her early version of events. The charge places a domestic shooting that at first looked unresolved into the center of Mecklenburg County’s criminal court system.
According to the arrest affidavit, Huntersville police officers were dispatched around 12:50 p.m. on Nov. 10 to 8518 New Oak Lane for what was reported as a suicide attempt call. When officers arrived, they found Susan Perry kneeling on the floor as first responders began trying to save her husband. Joe Perry was in his office with what detectives described as an apparent wound to the center of his chest, and he was later pronounced dead. Detectives said a firearm was lying on a nearby table, and blood droplets were visible around a stool positioned in front of it. In her first statement, Perry told investigators she heard a “thud,” went into the office and saw her husband on his side with blood, then called 911. That account framed the case at the outset as a death she said she discovered rather than a shooting she took part in.
Investigators later said the digital trail on the couple’s phones became one of the case’s most important pieces of evidence. Detectives wrote that Susan Perry’s phone contained searches about how much her husband’s wedding ring was worth, what to do if a husband wants a divorce and a search for “center mass shots.” Police reinterviewed her on Feb. 6, 2026, nearly three months after the killing. During that interview, according to the affidavit, she gave a new account. She said she and her husband had argued the night before, on Nov. 9, about his wanting a divorce. She said she stayed in her room the next morning until after “Lexi” left for work around 10:30 a.m. She then said she and Joe Perry argued in the hallway, that he walked to his office, and that she followed him there. Perry told detectives he picked up a firearm and sat on a stool while holding it normally, not pointing it at anyone, but she feared he might use it. She said she grabbed the gun, a struggle followed and the weapon fired, striking him in the chest.
Detectives said that revised version did not end their doubts. The affidavit says Perry made inconsistent statements about how long she delayed getting care for her husband and whether she tried to help him at all. Investigators also said she gave conflicting accounts of where she put the gun after the shot was fired. A medical examiner’s report, cited in the affidavit, said the bullet’s trajectory showed a “close” range shooting, a finding detectives said matched how near she said she was to her husband during the struggle. But the affidavit does not say that the medical examiner ruled the death an accident, a suicide or a homicide in the narrative provided with the warrant request. It also does not answer several basic questions that remain open in public records, including whether anyone else in the house heard the argument, how long the delay was before aid was rendered, or whether prosecutors believe the search terms were entered before the shooting as planning evidence or earlier for some unrelated reason. Those gaps are likely to matter as the case moves deeper into court.
The setting adds to the stakes. The Perrys lived in Huntersville, a fast-growing town in the Charlotte area where many violent-crime cases quickly draw regional scrutiny because they move through the larger Mecklenburg County court system. In this case, the alleged conflict described by police centered on a possible divorce, money worries and the value of personal property, themes investigators commonly examine in domestic homicide cases for motive and intent. The affidavit’s language also shows how much modern murder investigations can depend on a mix of scene evidence, forensic review and phone records rather than a single eyewitness account. Police pointed to the firearm’s location on a table, blood droplets around the stool and the chest wound itself as details that gave context to Perry’s statements. They paired that scene evidence with the search history and the later interview. The result was a case that shifted from a reported suicide attempt call in November to a first-degree murder arrest in February, after detectives concluded the original account no longer fit the evidence they had gathered.
The legal path has moved in stages. Perry was arrested on Feb. 6, 2026, and booked into the Mecklenburg County jail on a first-degree murder charge. Early reports said a judge set bond at $150,000. Local court reporting later said she posted that bond and was released from jail on Feb. 10. Earlier coverage listed a Feb. 27 court appearance, but records publicly summarized in news reports after her release did not clearly identify the next hearing date. That leaves the case in a common but important posture: the charge has been filed, the defendant is no longer in custody, and the prosecution now has to keep building the record through forensic review, witness interviews and court filings that will test whether the evidence supports a trial on first-degree murder. Defense lawyers, if they challenge the state’s theory, are likely to focus on intent, timing, the physical struggle Perry described and the meaning of the search history, though those arguments were not laid out in the materials reviewed for this article.
Even in the limited public record, the scene remains stark. Detectives described a home office, a stool, a gun on a table and a husband shot in the center of the chest. They also described a wife whose story changed from hearing a sound and finding her husband bleeding to physically grabbing the weapon before it fired. Those two versions are close enough to involve the same room and the same death, but far enough apart to shape the entire case. Police did not include a public statement from Perry in the affidavit beyond the summaries of her interviews, and no family member was quoted in the court narrative. Still, the mention of “Lexi” leaving for work at about 10:30 a.m. suggests other people connected to the household may become part of the timeline as prosecutors and defense lawyers refine what happened that morning. For now, the case turns less on dramatic public claims than on small details: when the argument started, where each person stood, how quickly help was sought and why the phone searches appeared on Perry’s device.
As of March 15, 2026, Susan Michelle Perry remained charged with first-degree murder in her husband’s death, and the case was still pending in Mecklenburg County. The next major public milestone is expected to be a court appearance or filing that more clearly sets out the prosecution’s timeline and evidence.
Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.