When Stacy Feldman was found dead in her shower in Denver, Colorado, at the age of 44, her husband claimed it had simply been a tragic accident.

But it would take years and an unexpected sisterhood of women to expose the truth and bring the killer of the mother of two  to justice, according to Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.

Who Was Stacy Feldman? 

As the youngest of three sisters, Stacy grew up in Muncie, Indiana. 

“The three of us were very close,” her sister Susan Altman remembered in the episode, titled “The Sisterhood.” “And she was the baby of the family, daddy’s little girl.” 

Altman described her sister as someone who was very girly, loved the color pink and was “the life of the party.” 

“Just fun,” she said.

Stacy also loved helping others and was dedicated to her community. Her whole life she had dreamed of becoming a wife and mother, but as she entered her 30s, she had yet to find her perfect partner.

“You know, her friends were getting married, they were having children and the time was ticking for her,” Altman recalled.

That all changed when she was introduced to Robert “Bob” Feldman.

“He was charismatic,” friend Jan Goldenberg told Dateline. “You know, he made his way into her heart.”

The couple got married in a beautiful ceremony in Montreal at The Ritz in what Stacy, who wore a beautiful tiara, hoped would be her own happily ever after.

The pair settled in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado and quickly welcomed a daughter and then a son.

What happened to Stacy Feldman?

But Stacy’s life was far from the fairytale she’d imagined and on March 1, 2015, she was discovered dead in her shower. 

Bob told police that he’d dropped the children off at their synagogue that morning for religious school around 8:30 a.m. Stacy was supposed to pick them up at noon and take them to a carnival in celebration of the Jewish holiday Purim, but she never arrived. The school called Bob instead, who shuttled the children off to the carnival before returning home with the kids in tow around 3 p.m. 

When he got in the door, he said he heard the shower running in the primary bathroom and discovered Stacy lying unconscious on the floor of the shower.

“Oh, my God. I need help. Please, help me. Please,” he begged in a 911 call placed moments later. “Please, my wife’s not breathing. Please.” 

Paramedics arrived just minutes later, but it was too late. Stacy was dead. 

Denver Police Detective Randy Denison arrived at the scene about an hour and half later and noted that there was nothing at the scene that triggered any suspicion.

“There was nothing to indicate that some intruder had broken in and done this or there was no area where you saw a fight and blood spatter or you know, things knocked over, anything like that,” he said.

Yet, he did notice one unusual thing. Stacy was wearing a fancy gold and silver dress watch at the time of her death, not the normal sort of watch one would take into the shower.

Bob told him that Stacy had consumed a marijuana edible at a party the night before and said she suffered from some chronic health issues, like rheumatoid arthritis, but nothing obvious explained her death. 

Her body was also riddled with bruises and abrasions. Denison noticed that two fentanyl patches had been on Stacy’s body, suggesting a possible accidental overdose.

But strangely, after the autopsy was conducted, the medical examiner found no fentanyl or marijuana in her system. She had some hardening of the arteries in her heart, but nothing significant enough that it would have caused her death. Unable to identify a cause, the medical examiner ruled her cause of death undetermined.

A chilling message from the grave

After Stacy’s family got the heartbreaking news that she’d died, they rushed to Colorado to say their goodbyes and help Bob and the children adjust to their new reality.

But as Altman was sitting at Stacy’s newly dug grave, she got a disturbing feeling that her sister was trying to communicate with her from beyond the grave.

“I was sitting at the grave, crying, and, um, I had a chill come over me,” she explained. “And she said to me, ‘Susan, something’s not right and you have to do something about this.’”

Altman believed that Bob, a chronically underperforming salesman, may have been responsible for her sister’s death and called Denison to share her suspicions.

She knew that Stacy had to give up her role as a stay at home mom to go back to work after Bob failed to bring in enough money for the family. She described Bob as someone always looking for a “free buck.” According to her, he was even known to bring a broken suitcase to the airport, then claim it was damaged in transit and demand the airlines replace it with a nicer model.

“She put up blinders,” Altman said of Stacy’s reaction to the schemes. “She wanted those children so badly and she was getting older and she just wanted to make it work so badly.” 

Stacy’s friends and family also knew that Bob hadn’t been faithful to her. Stacy herself found out about the infidelity after a woman he was having a sexual relationship with showed up at her door and said Bob had been helping her out financially.

According to Goldenberg, Stacy was “disgusted” and the pair separated several times during the rocky relationship, but Bob was always able to win her back.

“He always lured her back.” Altman said. “He would say I’m gonna change and we’re gonna go to therapy and you know that we’re going to have the life that you always wanted.”

Her friends and family said Bob was also financially and emotionally controlling and would threaten to take the kids from her if she did leave.

Unusual clues in Stacy’s death

Denison had his own suspicions about Bob’s story. He noted that although a shower caddy had been knocked down and shampoo bottles were scattered in the shower, other bottles along the door of the shower door had remained perfectly in place and a towel still hung neatly from the door handle. 

Denison also found it strange that the floor of the bathroom had been dry when he arrived, although Bob claimed he’d pulled his wife out of the wet shower to give er CPR. 

Bob — who cashed in on a $750,000 life insurance policy after Stacy’s death — had also changed his story about the day Stacy died. While he initially claimed he never returned home after taking his children to religious school until 3 p.m., he now claimed he had come home but cleaned out the garage and went exercising in a park that day.

But perhaps the most telling clue came from Susan McBride, a woman who met Bob through Tinder not long before Stacy died. She went on several dates with Bob, who claimed he was separated from a woman who was an “absentee mother.”

Yet during her own internet sleuthing details of his account, including his last name and his description of Stacy, who was in reality the PTO president of his children’s school, didn’t add up. McBride decided to reach out to Stacy on March 1, 2015 — the same day she died — to alert her that her husband was cheating on her.

McBride said just minutes after sending Stacy an email, the mom of two called her and was “so sweet and kind.” 

“She wasn’t angry. She said I’m so sorry he did that to you,” McBride recalled. “And she said, ‘I’m done with him.’” 

McBride never talked to Stacy or Bob again, but after some more googling a few months later she learned that Stacy died just hours after they’d talked. 

“I got physically ill,” she said through tears. “I knew immediately when I saw the date that that was the reason she was dead.”

McBride then called the Denver Police and spoke to Denison about her account.

Without a cause of death, however, the case hit a standstill. 

How did Stacy Feldman die? 

It wasn’t until years later, when Altman got the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention involved, that the case finally came together. 

The institute’s medical expert, Dr. Bill Smock, an emergency room doctor with a fellowship in forensics who’d participated in thousands of autopsies and crime scene evaluations, spent months reviewing photos and reports from the autopsy and the scene.

He determined that bruising and trauma to Stacy’s mouth and nose, including a chipped tooth, suggested that someone had pressed against her nose and mouth as she died. She also had petechiae in her eyes, a sign of strangulation, and more than 80 separate injuries to her body, including bruises and abrasions.

He believed the evidence suggested that someone had attacked Stacy, placing their knees on her upper arms to hold her down as they choked and suffocated her.