A mother of two who was beaten, bound, raped and nearly choked to death by a masked intruder has detailed how she came to the horrifying realisation that it was all a sinister plot by her stalker-turned-ex-husband to get back at her.
Morgan Metzer said she noticed a masked man standing in the doorway of her bedroom in her Canton, Georgia, home in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2021, using a voice-distorting tool to make him sound like “Batman.” Sun.
Her twins were away on holiday with family and she was alone in the house when the nightmare began.
“I screamed so loud I don’t think I’ll ever scream like that again. It hurt so much,” she recalled. “And then he was on top of me.”
The masked man began violently beating her with the butt of a pistol, then he bound the mother of two with cable ties and sexually assaulted her.
About 30 minutes into the assault, the assailant began choking her, and Metzer described the intense feeling of being deprived of oxygen as “the worst feeling in the world.”
“At that point I knew I was going to die,” she told the outlet.
“He had a Batman-like mask on and his ears were turned up a little bit,” she recalled of what she believed were her final moments on earth.
But suddenly the attack stopped and the suspect dragged her, half-naked, onto the deck.
As the killer began to flee the scene he made some terrifying final comments about how much she would miss her children and husband, which immediately raised her suspicions.
“And then I thought, ‘Wow, that’s him,'” she told the outlet. “Why would someone suddenly say they’re going to be lonely without their husband?”
Even though her identity was concealed and she was in a daze after the assault, Metzer believed from the start that her attacker was her ex-husband, Rodney Metzer.
Tied up, nearly naked, and exposed to the winter air with a pillowcase over her head, she desperately tried to wake up, terrified that if she fell asleep she would die from the head injuries.
But around 1:40 a.m., someone rushed to the house to help: her ex-husband.
He lived about 15 minutes away from her house and explained to her that a stranger had shown up at his apartment and told him his ex-wife’s house had been broken into.
Though he seemed devastated by what had happened, Metzer didn’t believe it.
While waiting for the police, she began to accuse him of assaulting her, which he panicked and adamantly denied.
The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office responded to the home around 2 a.m. and after a few hours questioned why Rodney had arrived so early.
Police soon discovered that while his ex-wife was still tied up outside, Rodney had returned to the apartment, changed his clothes and returned to the scene, playing hero.
Investigators found a handgun in the defendant’s car and zip ties in the apartment that ultimately matched the zip ties used to bind the defendant’s ex-wife, according to the complaint. Released in August 2021 From the Blue Ridge Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Canton, Georgia.
Rodney was arrested within hours of the vicious attack on his ex-wife.
“I was relieved because no one believed him to be a bad person,” she told the outlet. “He always tried to push the blame onto me and make me think I was in the wrong. That was gaslighting.”
Investigators later found surveillance footage that showed Rodney coming out of a Lowe’s with a bundle of zip ties that matched the ones used on his ex-wife.
He also used his phone and laptop to search for terms such as “how long would it take to starve to death” and “how long would it take to strangle someone to the point of unconsciousness.”
After his arrest, it was revealed that Rodney had hatched this insane scheme to win back an ex-girlfriend.
The two were high school sweethearts, meeting when she was 14 and he was a senior in high school.
They married in 2010, but lost their first child to a congenital heart defect a year later.
The couple became parents to twins a year after the tragedy.
On the surface, the two appeared to be in love, but behind the scenes, Rodney had been gaslighting his wife for years.
“He made me believe I pushed him down the stairs, which I didn’t. He made me feel like I was an aggressive and harmful figure in the family,” she said.
The two divorced in December 2020 but remained friends for the sake of their children.
“This guy is a master manipulator,” Assistant District Attorney Rachel Ash said.
“Days before the attack, he faked a cancer diagnosis in an attempt to gain his ex-wife’s sympathy.”
Just days before the attack, Morgan and Rodney had driven to Florida together to leave the twins with family over the Christmas holidays “and wanted to show we were united,” she told The Sun.
After returning home, Rodney told her he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
“He forged documents,” Metzer said, “as a last resort to try to get me back.”
After that plan failed, Metzer hatched an “intricate plan” that investigators believe was for Metzer to kill his ex-wife and then take his own life, Ash said.
“He couldn’t carry out that plan, so he devised a new plan to rescue her instead,” Ash said.
“Fortunately, Sheriff’s Office investigators discovered the scheme and quickly arrested the defendants.”
Rodney pleaded guilty on Aug. 4, 2021, to 14 charges, including kidnapping, burglary and sexual assault.
Under the plea agreement, he was sentenced to 70 years in prison, of which 25 will be served in prison and the rest on probation.
