Husband charged with murder, claims wife stabbed to death by two intruders as he hid in basement

DEARBORN HEIGHTS, MI (WXYZ) - Shonta Dupree claims intruders broke into his Dearborn Heights home and  threw him down the basement stairs before they stabbed his wife to death.

Dupree reportedly told investigators he could hear his wife screaming his name, but he pretended to be hurt and stayed in the basement until he heard the killers leave the house.

Police say Shonta Dupree, a truck driver, gave a different story to officers that arrived about a minute after he called 911. At that point, police say Dupree claimed "two large brown men" forced his wife into their home when she arrived home from work. He reportedly told police that the men knocked him into the basement, but he managed to get back up the stairs and throw his wallet at the men who were attacking his wife. That's when he says the men left.

After discovering a number of inconsistencies in Dupree's statements, he was arrested.

And, on Monday, Shonta Maurice Dupree was arraigned on a charge of First Degree Murder.

Police say about an hour before Nytia Dupree was murdered, Mr. Dupree called their 16-year-old son who was at school and told him to rush home because a pipe had burst in the house. But the teen told police there was no pipe problem and that what his father really wanted was for him to try and access his mother's Facebook page. 

The teen told police his father was upset, saying he wanted him to find his mother's "real" Facebook page.

The teen returned to school before his mother got home.

Police say Nytia Dupree, an Assistant Principal at Turning Point Academy in Detroit, had two Facebook pages. And her relationship status on one of them had recently been changed from "Married" to "In a relationship".

The Dupree's son said his parents recently told him they were going to separate.

While Shonta Dupree, 38, claimed the intruders knocked him into the basement, police say items at the bottom of the stairs were inconsistent with his story.

Police say Dupree also suggested that the killers could have been looking to steal $100,000 in drug money that he brought home a couple hours earlier and left in a duffle bag on the couch.

Investigators say no large sum of money was found and there is no evidence that Mr. Dupree has any connection to drugs.