PLATTSMOUTH, Nebraska — A Cass County judge on Monday declined to lower the bail for a Weeping Water man charged in the apparent suicide death of his Florida girlfriend.
Matthew Stubbendieck, 41, is charged with assisted suicide in connection with the Aug. 1 death of 38-year-old Alicia Wilemon-Sullivan.
Stubbendieck, who recently moved back to Nebraska from Florida, was seeking a reduction in bail to $10,000. He would have to post 10 percent of that, or $1,000, to be released.
Cass County Attorney Nathan Cox argued against the bail reduction, noting that the amount already had been reduced from $50,000 to $20,000. Nothing has changed since that time, he said.
“He did assist a person in killing themselves,” Cox said. “He could have called (authorities) and had her taken into custody, saving her life, but he didn’t.”
Defense attorney Julie Bear told Cass County District Judge Michael Smith that Stubbendieck’s father is very ill. Stubbendieck would live with his parents if he were released from the Cass County Jail, she said.
“The most important factor is that between the time (Stubbendieck) led authorities to the body until charges were filed, a couple of months’ time, there was an investigation, and he didn’t go anywhere,” Bear said. “I think we have sufficient guarantees that we know where he is going to be.”
Stubbendieck told investigators that he met Wilemon-Sullivan while living in Florida. He picked her up at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield on July 31 and took her to dinner with his parents and brother that evening.
The following day, Aug. 1 — according to his statements in court documents — he took her to a secluded spot a mile west of Weeping Water on private property near an old quarry that locals call Lake Acapulco. Over seven hours, Stubbendieck said, Wilemon-Sullivan cut her wrists.
He said he twice tried to suffocate her to end her suffering but could not go through with it. He told authorities that she told him she had terminal cancer, but an autopsy revealed no tumors or masses.
Officials said Wilemon-Sullivan’s wounds were consistent with self-cutting, but her body was too decomposed to see what role attempted suffocation might have played.
