Woman discovers husband of 23 years arrested for murder secret fiancée

A woman was horrified to discover that her husband of 23 years was living a double life — when he was arrested for murdering his secret fiancée.

Melanie Addie, from Missouri, said her ‘mind was boggled’ when police showed up to her house and told her that James Addie, 56 — the man she had been married to for more than two decades — had been engaged to someone else at the same time.

It turns out, James cheated on Melanie for more than seven years with a woman named Molly Watson, 35. 

On April 27, 2018 — just three days before James and Molly were set to tie the knot to one another — police found Molly’s body outside of her car in Monroe County.

There was a single gunshot wound in the back of her head — and they arrested James for her murder. Two weeks after they arrested him, Melanie filed for divorce. 

He was convicted in 2021 of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. He was then sentenced in July to life in prison without parole plus 10 years. 

‘It was just mind-boggling. It made no sense at all,’ Melanie told 20/20 in a new special about the murder, which airs tonight. ‘It didn’t seem right. This was not my life.’

Throughout their marriage, Melanie said James, who worked as a corrections officer, was ‘selfish,’ ‘controlling,’ and ‘intimidating,’ but she never suspected that he was cheating on her. 

‘He was a pretty selfish person … He could be controlling and intimidating … it could be challenging,’ she recalled.

The former couple share two kids together — a daughter, named Emma, and a son, named Ben. 

And although she didn’t think he was being unfaithful at the time, looking back now, she said she definitely sees some warning signs. 

Melanie said: ‘He would get off work at 3 P.M. … and usually he would get home at 5 and I would say, “Why are you always so late?” That would be an argument. He didn’t want to tell me anything.’

Over the years, Melanie noted that he took two trips without her — he went to Florida and claimed it was a business trip, and he vacationed in Mexico, telling Melanie he was going with his friends.

However, Melanie later discovered he was actually traveling with Molly — when she found photos of them together on the trips in a storage space in their garage. 

On the day of Molly’s death, she said James ‘seemed like he always did.’  

‘About seven o’clock, he came into the living room, where I was, and said he was going to a friend’s house,’ she added.

He came back after she had gone to sleep, however Melanie was woken suddenly in the middle of the night when the police knocked on their door. 

She added: ‘He had always been very hard on me about how a wife should act and how life should be, and then he did this. He had an affair, and that’s OK? No. We were done.’

Melanie visited James in jail a week after he was arrested, and he insisted he did not kill Molly.

‘[He said] he’s very sorry for the affair, but he insists that he was not the killer,’ she revealed. ‘I looked at him as someone I didn’t want back.’

During his trial, prosecutors theorized that James had told Molly that Melanie was his ex-wife and that she had died in a car accident. And they believe he killed her because she found out he was lying.

‘Forensic searches of Molly’s phones indicated that the day before she was murdered, she was looking for Melanie Addie’s obituary,’ prosecutor Talley Smith said. 

James has maintained his innocence, and later slammed his defense attorney, claiming he did not get a fair trial because his lawyer didn’t present enough evidence in support of his case. 

‘There is no way that I could have done this crime,’ James said in a statement he read aloud at his sentencing. 

‘The only one I hold at fault in this entire process is my attorney because he had the means and he had the ability to present my case and he failed to do it whenever I asked him.’

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