Alva Review-Courier -

CLEVELAND (AP) — There wasn't much doubt in the minds of police in the Ohio village of Hartville, best known for its fertile muck farms, that Phil Snider killed his wife of 53 years.

But it took an undercover female officer who played her role so convincingly that the 73-year-old man proposed marriage over numerous cups of fast-food coffee and he revealed in gruesome detail how he had bludgeoned 70-year-old Roberta Snider to death and disposed of incriminating evidence.

Along the way, after his wife went missing in January, Snider spun different versions of what happened to her when questioned...