ANDERSON — Only hours before an Elwood resident’s neck was slit on July 9, the wife of the man charged in his murder filed for divorce and was granted a protection order.

In court documents filed that day, Nellie E. Guffey claims Jerry H. Guffey, 53, threatened to kill her the day before while the two were at Elwood’s Center for Mental Health.

“(Jerry Guffey) was high on pills, drunk, argumentative,” Nellie Guffey states as a reason for seeking the protective order. “(He) threatened to kill me (and) my daughter.”

Madison County prosecutors formally charged Jerry Guffey with murder on Thursday in connection with the killing of 78-year-old John L. Collier inside Collier’s home at 400 N. 11th St., Elwood. If convicted, Jerry Guffey faces 45 to 65 years in prison.

He is also charged with auto theft, a Class D felony, suspected of stealing Collier’s 1997 Ford Crown Victoria. Prosecutors also charged him with aiding in arson, also a Class D felony, after police say he told his brother to set the vehicle on fire in rural Henry County. Each charge is punishable by six months to three years behind bars.

During his arraignment, Guffey told Magistrate Stephen Clase he is disabled.

“It’s a mental disability,” he said. “I hear voices.”

Clase entered an automatic not-guilty plea on Guffey’s behalf, and approved the appointment of a public defender.

In the court records, Nellie Guffey describes two incidents earlier this year where she felt threatened by her husband. According the records, while high on prescription medication, he knocked her glasses off and stepped on them while they were at their home. In another incident, Jerry Guffey threatened to use a baseball bat to destroy a vehicle and “everything that is dear to me in the house,” according to the protective order request.

In the protective order, Nellie Guffey asks that her husband be required to surrender a hunting knife to authorities. But according to documents filed with the murder count, investigators don’t believe it was the weapon used to kill Collier. During a search of Guffey’s home, detectives seized a wooden-handled steak knife with an 8- to 10-inch blade they suspect was the murder weapon, according to an affidavit.

It wasn’t immediately known if the divorce filing is related to the homicide. Prosecutors allege that after Jerry Guffey killed Collier he stole Collier’s car and drove to his son’s New Castle home. Jerry Guffey Jr. told a neighbor his father told him he killed Collier because he viewed him as a romantic rival for his girlfriend. The court documents don’t mention Nellie Guffey.

Prior incident

Nellie and Jerry Guffey separated June 30, according to divorce records. Attempts to reach Nellie Guffey were unsuccessful Thursday. They married on Valentine’s Day 1996, a little more than a year after he broke into his future sister-in-law’s home in Elwood and held her at gunpoint.

Guffey, armed with a shotgun, was apparently burglarizing the residence along North F Street when Jorja Deckard returned home, according to a story published in The Herald Bulletin.