Morgan Metzer Story: Fake Cancer, Attack, and 70-Year Sentence

The Morgan Metzer story is the case of a Canton, Georgia woman whose ex-husband, Rodney Metzer, broke into her home in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2021 while wearing a mask, beat and sexually assaulted her, then returned about forty minutes later to call 911 and pose as the family member who had found her. He pleaded guilty to fourteen felony charges and was sentenced to seventy years. Her account is the basis of the 2024 Lifetime film Gaslit by My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story and a CBS 48 Hours episode.

Years of Abuse Before the Attack

Morgan and Rodney met when she was fourteen and he was seventeen. They married in 2009, when Morgan was twenty-one, and had twins in 2012.¹

Rodney’s abuse followed a pattern Morgan later described as physical harm paired with careful management of how it looked to others. He would hurt her and then convince her parents and their friends that she had been the one out of control and he had only restrained her. After pushing her down a flight of stairs, he told the children she had pushed him. He turned friends against her, warned her that no one would believe her, and told her she would lose custody if she left. He accused her of forgetting things she had never said, a tactic designed to make her question her own memory.²¹

Morgan filed for divorce in 2020. It was finalized that December.¹

The Fake Cancer Diagnosis

About a week before New Year’s Day 2021, Rodney told Morgan he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He produced fabricated doctor’s notes and a fake hospital bill, documents investigators later determined he had made using a dummy email account.³ The story worked long enough that she let him sleep on her sofa while he attempted to reconcile.

On December 31, 2020, Morgan told him to leave after he refused to tell his own parents about the supposed diagnosis. She rejected his final attempts at reconciliation.⁴ By then, he had already prepared. On December 30 he bought zip ties at a Lowe’s store using his own debit card and pre-looped them so they could be fastened quickly. During his week in her home he had disabled a basement window sensor, removing and reattaching it so the alarm would still register the window as closed.¹

The New Year’s Day Attack

Shortly after midnight on January 1, 2021, a masked figure dressed in black came through the tampered basement window and into Morgan’s bedroom. He jumped on her, struck her with the butt of a handgun, and punched her. Morgan later said the intruder spoke in a low, gravelly voice she compared to “Batman.”⁵

He strangled her twice, once nearly to the point of unconsciousness, and sexually assaulted her. He bound her hands behind her back with the pre-looped zip ties, forced her to give up her phone passcode, and used the phone to unlock her back porch door remotely and to delete footage from her home security system. He placed a pillowcase over her head, walked her onto the porch, and told her not to move until she heard two car honks or he would kill her.¹

Morgan lay face down, naked, and zip-tied on the porch in the winter cold for about forty minutes. Then Rodney arrived. Around 2:00 a.m. he called 911, saying he was a concerned family member who had just found his ex-wife bound and beaten on her deck.⁴

How Investigators Tied Rodney to the Crime

The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office led the investigation. Morgan suspected her ex-husband from the start, and detectives obtained a search warrant for his apartment.³

Inside, they found an open bag of zip ties. A crime lab technician determined that a detached tail piece from one of those ties was a “perfect match” for the restraints used on Morgan’s wrists. A sergeant scanned the bag’s barcode with a mobile app, tracing it to Lowe’s. Store records and surveillance footage showed Rodney buying that exact package on December 30, 2020, his face clearly visible.³ A handgun was recovered from his vehicle.⁴

Digital evidence filled in the rest. Rodney’s phone and laptop held searches for “how long to choke someone unconscious,” “how to change the sound of your voice,” and “how long before you starve to death.”⁴ He had also searched for “cancer letter from hospital” and “how to get sympathy from your ex.”³ Investigators found unauthorized photos of Morgan taken in the shower and copied text messages on his phone, leading to separate invasion-of-privacy charges.⁶

Surveillance video from Rodney’s apartment complex showed him leaving at 1:24 a.m. in different clothing and carrying a plastic bag that was never recovered, contradicting his account of simply driving over to check on Morgan.¹ During a post-arrest interview he claimed he “didn’t know what zip ties were,” a statement the Lowe’s footage flatly contradicted.⁴ Detectives also found a book in his apartment titled 7 Ways to Be Her Hero, which prosecutors cited as evidence of motive: the attack had been staged so Rodney could arrive to rescue her and win her back.³

Prosecutors concluded that Rodney’s original plan had been to kill Morgan and then himself, and that when he could not go through with the killing he switched to the rescue scheme.⁴

Guilty Plea and Seventy-Year Sentence

On August 4, 2021, in the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit in Cherokee County, Rodney Metzer pleaded guilty to all fourteen charges: kidnapping, home invasion, first-degree burglary, armed robbery, two counts of aggravated assault with family violence, aggravated battery with family violence, false imprisonment, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, three counts of invasion of privacy, sexual battery, and battery with family violence.⁴

Judge Anthony Baker sentenced him to seventy years total: twenty-five in prison, with most of that time ineligible for early parole, followed by forty-five years on probation. The court barred him from contacting Morgan or their children.⁴⁷ Assistant District Attorney Rachel Ashe, who prosecuted the case, called the evidence “overwhelming” and Rodney a “master manipulator.”³ District Attorney Shannon Wallace called the case “a classic example of how the most dangerous time for a domestic violence victim is when she decides to leave an abusive relationship.”

Where Morgan and Rodney Are Now

Rodney Metzer is incarcerated at Baldwin State Prison in Hardwick, Georgia, with a listed possible release date of December 31, 2045.⁸

Morgan is raising her children and has been in therapy for the trauma of the attack and the years that preceded it. She speaks publicly about narcissism and gaslighting as a survivor advocate. “I’m trying to raise awareness for narcissism and gaslighting,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I want to help women realize they’re in a situation before it gets too bad.”⁷

The Lifetime Film and 48 Hours Episode

CBS aired a 48 Hours episode titled “The ‘Batman’ Intruder” on December 14, 2024, reported by Nikki Battiste, with footage from Rodney’s police interrogation and interviews with Morgan and investigators.⁹

Lifetime released Gaslit by My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story in 2024, directed by Lee Gabiana and starring Jana Kramer as Morgan and Austin Nichols as Rodney.¹⁰²¹¹¹² Morgan described watching the film as “really surreal” and said telling her story publicly had been “empowering.”

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CBS News. Morgan Metzer Rodney Metzer Canton Georgia Ex-Husband Home Invasion Rescue Hero
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NBC News Today. Gaslit by My Husband True Story
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CBS News. Morgan Metzer Georgia Attack Rodney Metzer Evidence Photos
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Cherokee County District Attorney’s Office. Press Release: Rodney William Metzer Conviction and Sentencing
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Oxygen. Morgan Metzer’s Nightmare: The True Story Behind Gaslit by My Husband
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Fox 5 Atlanta. Evil Lives Here Morgan Metzer Rodney Metzer Canton Georgia
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Entertainment Weekly. Where Is Morgan Metzer Now
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People. Where Is Rodney Metzer Now
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Paramount Press Express. A Masked Assailant, a Disguised Voice, and an Unexpected Twist
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Lifetime. Gaslit by My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story
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People. Where Is Morgan Metzer Now
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Entertainment Weekly. Lifetime and Jana Kramer React to Gaslit by My Husband Being No. 1 on Netflix