Tamara Colbert, a 39-year-old White/Caucasian female from Enola, Pennsylvania, died on December 24, 2022, inside the home she shared with her husband on Wild Orchid Lane. It was Christmas Eve when concern from Christopher Colbert’s family brought Hampden Township police to the residence for a welfare check. Christopher had reportedly told his father that Tamara was dead and suggested her fatal injury was self-inflicted. When officers entered the home, they found Tamara dead in a third-floor bathroom from a gunshot wound to the head.
The scene initially appeared to have been staged to support a suicide story. Investigators reported finding a blood-spattered note, attributed to Christopher, that appeared to anticipate blame and tried to frame what happened as something other than murder. In the note, he reportedly wrote that he did not kill her and referred to the two of them fighting and not doing well. But police and prosecutors said the evidence did not match a suicide. Authorities later alleged that Tamara had been strangled before she was shot, and that Christopher had removed bloody clothing and attempted to clean the crime scene before officers arrived.
Christopher Colbert was the only other person reported to have been inside the home when Tamara was killed. Police said he smelled of alcohol and did not comply with officers’ commands when they encountered him. According to reports, he claimed that he and Tamara had argued, that he went upstairs and retrieved a gun from a safe, and that the weapon discharged while the two struggled over it. Investigators rejected that account as the evidence developed, and Christopher was arrested and charged in connection with her death.
The case also exposed turmoil in the marriage before the killing. Prosecutors later said Tamara had discovered Christopher’s infidelity and had confided in a friend that she planned to confront him. Investigators described Christopher as struggling with several issues leading up to the homicide, including extramarital affairs, alcohol addiction, and being reprimanded at work. What began as a holiday welfare check became a homicide investigation centered on a domestic dispute, a staged scene, and a husband accused of killing his wife after she confronted him.
Christopher Kendig Colbert was charged with criminal homicide, aggravated assault, strangulation, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, and related offenses. He was held in Cumberland County Prison without bond as the case moved forward. In 2023, he entered a negotiated guilty plea to third-degree murder, aggravated assault, tampering with evidence, and recklessly endangering another person. On December 15, 2023, he was sentenced to 22 to 50 years in state prison for killing Tamara.
