The 48 Hours episode “Don’t Scream” investigates the attempted aggravated murder of Tiffany Mead of Davis County, Utah. On July 23, 2013, she went to meet her estranged husband Kristopher Ertmann, 25, thinking she was going to retrieve a child support check. In her car, with her baby son Noah in the backseat, Ertmann slit Mead’s throat. While he watched her bleed, Ertmann let Mead call 911 but only if she told the operator that she did it to herself as an attempted suicide. She arrived to the hospital in critical condition. One of the doctors on duty that night tells 48 Hours, “There’s no way she could have done that to herself, and not that deep.” Mead survived and Ertmann was arrested.
In The Standard-Examiner video below, Mead says she met Ertmann online and they got married in 2009. Shortly after that Ertmann, a member of the Army Reserves, was deployed to Iraq. “Once he got to Iraq, that’s when things started to change. He wasn’t the same person I married,” she said.
When in jail, Ertmann tried to pay a hit man to kill Mead for $5000. The solicitation was by phone. Ertmann told the hit man (who was an undercover police officer) to “have fun.” At his sentencing hearing, Ertmann said,“I was on those pills and they take away your emotions… If I was in my right mind, I wouldn’t have done those things.” He says in the video below he took the pills to help with PTSD. Ertmann also tells the judge “I’m not dangerous.” 48 Hours airs Saturdays at 10pm on CBS.
