HARRISONVILLE, Mo. — A transgendered Cass County man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges that he shot and killed his girlfriend in 2009.
Michael Adams, 39, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the shooting and killing 36-year-old Amber Hartwig at their Belton home in July of 2009.He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
According to neighbors, Adams was transforming into a woman, taking hormones and had long hair and fingernails. But Hartwig, the mother of Adams’s two children, wanted him to move out because he didn’t have a job and she wanted to move on with her life.
Prosecutor Teresa Hensley says the then 18-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son were packing up their belongings. It was July 2009 and their mother had told the kids she was leaving their father and that they would go with her. Adams was drunk. He shot Hartwig in the head then shot himself in the chest.
Adams told the court he suffers from gender identity disorder and even after his arrest for murder was taking hormone therapy drugs.
Hensley says she feels bad for everyone involved.
” It is incredibly heart breaking for me with the son, the son and the daughter, were in the home at the time,” Hensley said. “I know obviously it’s been difficult and will continue to be difficult for them the rest of their lives.”
Adams’ 18-year-old daughter actually heard the two shots and found her mother dead on the floor, while Adams was sitting on the floor and smoking a cigarette.
FOX 4 was told the two children now live with their grandparents in Iowa.
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