St. George man claimed wife was plotting to kill him, but made it up, police say

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Robert Quentin Sprague, 64, was arrested for allegedly fabricating a murder plot.
• Sprague reportedly accessed his wife's email to send incriminating messages to relatives.
• He allegedly admitted to sending emails impersonating his wife and filing a false police report.

ST. GEORGE — A St. George man was arrested Wednesday and accused of trying to make it appear as though his wife was plotting to kill him.

Instead, police say it was the husband who did all the scheming.

Robert Quentin Sprague, 64, was originally arrested for investigation of criminal solicitation, and was charged on Thursday in 5th District Court with identity fraud, two counts of forgery and witness retaliation, third-degree felonies; evidence tampering and obstruction of justice, class A misdemeanors; and providing false information to police, theft and electronic communication harassment, class B misdemeanors.

Sprague accessed his wife's email account through her phone that she left at home one day, and then sent emails to two of her relatives "making it appear that they were sent from her" and asking them "to assist in killing Robert and disposing of his body," according to a police booking affidavit.

Investigators believe that after sending the messages, Sprague took the phone to Las Vegas and put it in a garbage can.

"When asked where, Robert said he could not recall. When asked if he disposed of the phone so that law enforcement would not be able to track that he had sent the emails from the phone, he said, 'possibly,'" the affidavit states.

As detectives continued to question Sprague, he "admitted to sending the emails and then filing a false police report stating that his wife was conspiring to have him killed. Robert also admitted to disposing of the cellphone in Las Vegas," according to the arrest report.

A motive for the plot was not revealed in the affidavit. But prior to his arrest, Sprague's daughter told police that "Robert has a history of lying and being deceitful to include making false allegations against her mother, Robert's ex-wife, in Las Vegas, also for conspiring to have him killed," the affidavit alleges.

After Sprague learned that his daughter had given the police that information, he "sent his ex-wife a text message to relay to his daughter … that he was filing a complaint with her employer because she had spoken with me, insinuating that her job was in jeopardy for speaking with me. This caused his daughter a great deal of stress, anxiety, and fear because Robert is so manipulative," the arresting officer wrote.

"I will be filing some cease and desist, slander/ defamation lawsuits immediately!!!! You both have involved yourselves into something that is none of your business or concerns. Trying to destroy me and my marriage. We will get her removed from her job!!!!," Sprague messaged his ex-wife, telling her to relay the message to his daughter, according to the affidavit.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Pat Reavy

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Pat Reavy interned with KSL in 1989 and has been a full-time journalist for either KSL or Deseret News since 1991. For the past 25 years, he has worked primarily the cops and courts beat.