A mother-of-two — who was beaten, bound, raped, and nearly choked to death by a masked intruder — detailed how she came to the horrifying realization it was her ex-husband turned stalker’s sinister plan to try and win her back.
Morgan Metzer awoke in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2021 to a masked man standing in the bedroom doorway of her Canton, Ga., home using a voice distortion tool that made him sound like “something out of Batman,” she told The Sun.
Her twins were away with family for the vacation, and she was alone in the house when the nightmare began.
“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.”
The masked man started to viscously beat her with the butt of a pistol and would go on to restrain the mother of two with zip ties and sexually assault her.
About a half-hour into the assault, the assailant began to strangle 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 the scene, 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 being in a daze from the beating, Metzer had a feeling from the start 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 if she fell asleep, she could die from the head trauma she endured.
However, around 1:40 a.m., someone came rushing to the house to help — her ex-husband.
He lived about 15 minutes away from her house and explained to her that a stranger showed 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 wasn’t buying it.
As they waited for police, she began to accuse him of the attack — something that he adamantly denied in a panic.
The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the home at around 2 a.m. and, within hours, became suspicious about how Rodney had arrived so quickly.
Police quickly found that while his ex-wife was still tied up outside, Rodney went back to his apartment, changed his clothes, and returned to the scene to play the hero.
Investigators also located a handgun in the defendant’s vehicle and zip ties in his apartment that were ultimately matched to the zip ties used to bind his ex-wife, according to an August 2021 release from the Office of the District Attorney for the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit in Canton, Ga.
Rodney was then arrested within hours of the heinous attack on his ex-wife.
“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.”
Investigators later found surveillance video showing Rodney leaving a Lowe’s with a pack of zip ties, which were a match to the ones used on his ex-wife.
He also used his cellphone and laptop to search terms like “how long before you starve to death” or how long it takes to choke someone until they’re unconscious.
Following his arrest, it was revealed that Rodney had hatched the insane plan in a bid to win back his former flame.
They had been high school sweethearts, meeting when she was 14 and he was a senior.
In 2010, they got married — a year later they lost their first child to a congenital heart defect.
The couple became parents to twins a year after the tragedy.
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 diagnosis.
“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.”
Rodney pleaded guilty on Aug. 4, 2021, to 14 charges, including kidnapping, home invasion, and sexual battery.
As part of a plea deal, he was sentenced to 70 years in jail, 25 of which will be served in prison and the rest on probation.