Barbel “Babs” Munz, 64, a White woman from Hoback, Wyoming, died late on Labor Day, September 2, 2019, after being shot inside the home she shared with her husband, Heinrich “Heinz” Johann Karl Munz. A home health provider arrived the next day for a scheduled visit, knocked, and got no answer. When the provider returned on Wednesday around midday, voices seemed to be coming from inside, but the door was unlocked; stepping in, the provider saw Munz down and immediately backed out to call
911. Deputies responded and confirmed she had been shot, and that her husband was also dead nearby with a handgun close at hand. Investigators believed the deaths had occurred days earlier, and later estimates placed the time of death at around 10 p.m. on September 2, give or take a couple of hours.
In the first hours, officials treated the scene as suspicious and worked it as an active investigation, with Wyoming’s Division of Criminal Investigation assisting while detectives waited on a search warrant to comb the home for clues. Even then, the sheriff’s office emphasized there was no danger to neighbors and said no outstanding suspects were being sought. The sound that had suggested someone might be alive inside—the “voices” the provider heard—was ultimately traced to a television left playing in the house, a detail that sharpened the unease of a scene where time had kept moving while the people inside did not.
As the medical findings came back, the case’s direction narrowed. Teton County Coroner Brent Blue determined that Munz’s death was a homicide by gunshot wound, and that her husband’s death was a suicide by gunshot wound, consistent with a murder-suicide. With the only apparent suspect dead at the scene, there were no arrests, no charges filed, and no court proceedings to follow—only the painstaking work of documentation and interviews meant to answer, as much as possible, what could be answered. Investigators publicly acknowledged how little they could responsibly claim about motive, noting there was no note or paperwork laying out a reason, and that without a living suspect, certainty would be hard to reach.
