Man accused of trying to murder wife with staircase tripwire

A Pennsylvania man has been charged with attempted murder after he allegedly tried to kill his wife by rigging a tripwire at the top of a staircase inside their home.

William Joseph Dankesreiter Jr., 60, is accused of setting up a fishing line that he hoped would cause his wife, Laura, to trip up and fall down the stairs to their basement, KDKA-TV reports.

“It was obviously thought through,” State Trooper Stephen Limani told the Pittsburgh station. “There was nothing accidental about this.”

Dankesreiter’s despicable plot very nearly worked on Saturday morning when his 59-year-old wife went to the basement to get something from a freezer for breakfast, court documents show.

Although she did trip on the wire, she thankfully managed to catch herself before tumbling down the stairs.

“If she had fallen, there were about 10 steps she would have fallen down and there is a small landing area. And then another few steps, she would have been landing on concrete. I can only imagine how catastrophic her injuries would be,” Limani said.

The woman told detectives she thought the wire was part of the carpeting that had come loose at first, according to court papers obtained by TribLive.

However, she then reportedly spotted two metal eye hooks either side of the doorway which had been deliberately installed to hold the line around three inches above the carpet.

She also told police that only she and her husband had been at the home since Friday night, when they used the staircase to bring groceries inside.

Troopers responding to the home Saturday morning arrested Dankesreiter and charged him with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, simple assault and reckless endangerment.

He was being held at the Westmoreland County Prison on $500,000 bail, and has a preliminary court hearing scheduled for Friday.

Laura Dankesreiter told investigators that it wasn’t the first time her husband had tried to hurt her.

She has filed a protection from abuse order from her husband.

“That’s one of the things with domestic violence,” Limani said. “It usually increases. It starts at a low level, with verbal abuse, and escalates to physical violence.”