A mother of two who was assaulted, restrained, sexually assaulted, and on the verge of strangulation by a masked intruder described how she came to the horrible revelation that it was all part of her ex-husband’s evil scheme to reunite with her.
Morgan Metzer told the Sun that she woke up early on New Year’s Day 2021 to find a man in a mask standing in her Canton, Georgia, bedroom doorway. He was using a voice distortion gadget to sound like “something out of ‘Batman,'” she said.
The nightmare started while she was alone in the house and her twins were on vacation with family.
“I screamed so loud, it’s a scream that I don’t think I can ever do again. It was so painful,” she recalled. “Soon enough, he was on top of me.”
About a half-hour into the assault, the assailant began to choke her, with Metzer calling the feeling of being violently deprived of oxygen “the worst feeling in the world.”
“At that point, I knew I was going to die,” she told the outlet.
“He was wearing a mask which made him look like Batman, it even had the ears which angled up a bit,” she recalled in what she believed to be her last moments on Earth.
But suddenly, the attack stopped, and the suspect dragged her out onto her deck half-naked.
As the attacker began to flee, he made a final chilling comment about how she was going to miss her kids and husband — which immediately made her suspicious.
“That’s when I went, ‘Wow, it’s him,’” she told the outlet. “Why would somebody randomly say you’re going to miss your husband?”
Even with his identity hidden and with her being in a daze from the beating, Metzer had a feeling from the start that the attacker was her ex-husband, Rodney Metzer.
Bound, nearly naked, and left with a pillowcase over her head outside in the winter air, she tried her hardest to stay awake, fearing that if she fell asleep, she could die from the head trauma she had suffered.
But around 1:40 a.m., her ex-husband arrived to the residence in a hurry to provide assistance.
He informed her that he lived approximately fifteen minutes away and that he had received a call at his apartment from a stranger informing him that his ex-wife’s home had been broken into.
Metzer didn’t buy it, even though it appeared like he was horrified by what had transpired.
She started accusing him of the attack as they waited for the police, which he vehemently denied in a panic.
After arriving at roughly two in the morning, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office’s officers started to have doubts about Rodney’s speedy arrival.
Police soon discovered that Rodney had gone back to his apartment, changed into a new outfit, and come back to the scene to play the hero while his ex-wife was still restrained outside.
According to a release from the Office of the District Attorney for the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit in Canton, Georgia, dated August 20, 2021, investigators also found zip ties in the defendant’s residence that matched the ties used to bind his ex-wife, as well as a firearm in his car.
Soon after the horrific attack on his ex-wife, Rodney was taken into custody.
“No one had ever believed he was a bad person, it was a relief,” she told the outlet. “He would always blame stuff on me too, to make me think like I was in the wrong. That was the gaslighting.”
Subsequently, investigators discovered surveillance footage showed Rodney leaving a Lowe’s with a pack of zip ties identical to the ones he had used on his ex-wife.
In addition, he searched for phrases like “how long before you starve to death” and “how long does it take to choke someone until they pass out” on his laptop and mobile.
It came to light after his arrest that Rodney had devised the crazy scheme in an attempt to get his ex-girlfriend back.
They met when she was 14 and he was a senior in high school, and they went on to become best friends.
2010 saw their marriage. Their first kid passed away from a congenital heart condition a year later.
A year after the accident, the couple welcomed twins into their family.
The pair appeared loving on the surface, but underneath, Rodney had been gaslighting his wife for years.
“He had me convinced I pushed him down the stairs. I did not. He made me feel like I was the aggressive one and the toxic one in the family,” she said.
They got divorced in December 2020 but stayed friends for the sake of their children.
“This man is a master manipulator,” Assistant District Attorney Rachel Ashe said.
“In the days leading up to this attack, he faked a cancer diagnosis in an attempt to gain sympathy from his ex-wife.”
Just days before the attack, Morgan and Rodney drove to Florida together to drop their twins off with family for the Christmas break to “show them we were a united front,” she told the Sun.
Once they returned home, Rodney told her he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
“He even forged the documents,” Metzer said. “It was his last straw to try and get me back.”
After that scheme failed, Metzer developed a “convoluted plan” that investigators believe involved him killing his ex-wife before taking his own life, Ashe said.
“When he couldn’t go through with that plan, he instead devised a new plan to rescue her,” Ashe said.
“Fortunately, sheriff’s office investigators saw through this scheme and quickly arrested the defendant.”
On August 4, 2021, Rodney entered a guilty plea to 14 charges, which included sexual violence, house invasion, and kidnapping.
He received a sentence of 70 years in prison, of which 25 will be served in prison and the remaining 25 on probation, as part of a plea agreement.
