How an unfinished dryer cycle caught the attention of Idaho first responders investigating the suspicious death of a woman in a bathtub

When former Idaho State Trooper Dan Howard called 911 from his home in Athol, Idaho, on the night of Feb. 2, 2021, he was crying so much that it was hard to understand what he was saying.

"My wife ... she shot herself," Dan Howard told the operator. "She's in the bathtub dead ... I go upstairs and she's dead. She's dead ... she's gray, she has no pulse, nothing ... she's cold."

Dan Howard later told authorities that he had been downstairs and heard something hitting the floor upstairs. Dan Howard said that when he went upstairs over an hour later, he found his wife of 26 years, Kendy Howard, in a bathtub filled with water with a gunshot wound to her head.