Man reportedly tells police he stabbed wife and set her on fire

Lina Portman3 days ago

0 2 minutes read

Inset left: Zachary Mowel appears in a arraignment photo (Dickson County Sheriff's Office). Main image: The house he allegedly set on fire (Google Maps)

A Tennessee man is behind bars after confessing to stabbing his wife and leaving her to die in a burning building, authorities say.

Zachary Mowel, 28, is currently charged with one count each of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated arson, aggravated assault (domestic) and domestic assault, according to a news release from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

The incident happened Monday night. Firefighters first arrived at the scene at a home on North Charlotte Street in Dickson, a small town west of the Nashville metropolitan area.

An investigation by local police and state agents determined that Mowel attacked his wife, doused her with gasoline and then set their home on fire, the office said.

A family member of the victim says the scale of the crime is far worse than law enforcement has revealed so far.

A GoFundMe fundraiser has been started by Tori Ila Elizabeth Trotter, the assaulted woman's twin sister, to cover medical expenses and lost income.

The online fundraiser describes the “unimaginable” that happened when Tessa Mowel came home from work on Monday night.

Trotter said her husband “stabbed her in the back with a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabbed her 8 more times in the neck, chest and back, while brutally punching her in the face more than 30 times.”

After that, the disconcerting attack continued in a particularly cruel and frightening manner, according to the victim's sister.

“He poured gasoline on her and set her on fire while he watched her burn alive,” Trotter recounts the incident. “He then set the house on fire and left her to die. All of this happened in front of their 5- and 8-year-old sons who watched and begged their father not to kill their mother.”

Tessa Mowel, however, survived.

She is currently recovering in stable condition in the trauma unit at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

The victim is now paralyzed from the waist down, has third-degree burns on her right leg, a collapsed lung, all of her ribs are broken and she has nine stab wounds in total, according to her sister.

The fundraiser continues to anticipate more than a year of recovery. The children are now reportedly in the care of the twin sister.

“Please if you can, my whole family would appreciate any help,” the fundraiser reads.[H]She and her sons did not deserve this torture.

The brutality of that torture is underscored by what investigators discovered when they found Mowel amid billowing smoke near the back door of the residence: A knife was still lodged in her body, according to court documents obtained by Nashville-based ABC affiliate WKRN.

While the heavy toll the violence has taken on the shaken family is relatively clear, details about what led to the attack are scarce.

Police have not provided a specific motive for the incident. The victim told police that she and her husband had been arguing and that the argument had escalated, according to the television station.

However, police say the man himself confessed to the crime as soon as officers arrived outside the scene of the fire.

“I did it,” Zachary Mowel reportedly said as he walked toward police outside his burning and destroyed home. “I did it.”

The defendant is being held on $765,000 bail at the Dickson County Jail.