Prosecutors: Cliff-Push Bride Spoke of Killing Parents Before Husband's Death
Bride's alleged statements show his death wasn't accidental, prosecutors say.
Nov. 27, 2013— -- A Montana newlywed accused of fatally pushing her husband off a cliff told him one month before their wedding that she could kill her mother and stepfather, prosecutors alleged in a new federal court document.
Jordan Graham, 22, is set to go to trial next month for the July 7 murder of her husband, Cody Johnson, 25, who fell to his death off a cliff in Montana's Glacier National Park.
The couple had been married just eight days when prosecutors allege Graham blindfolded her husband and pushed him to his death on purpose. Graham contends it was an accident.
Prosecutors said the alleged statements Graham made about killing her mother and stepfather just weeks before her wedding would be used to "negate innocent intent and demonstrate the likelihood that the Defendant did an act with the requisite intent in the charged case," according to a filing in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Mont.
The document does not state who Graham allegedly made the statement to.
The couple wed on June 29, and investigators say a mere eight days later the newlyweds went for a walk through Glacier National Park. Graham told her friends she was already having second thoughts about the marriage, and planned to tell him, authorities said.
"I'm about to talk to him," she texted a friend that day, according to court documents, adding, "But dead serious if u don't hear from me at all again tonight, something happened."
As the couple neared the top of a cliff, an argument they'd been having got heated, according to an affidavit filed in federal court, and Graham told the FBI that her husband then grabbed her arm.
"Graham stated she could have just walked away, but due to her anger, she pushed Johnson with both hands in the back and as a result, he fell face first off the cliff," the affidavit states.
FBI agents say Graham not only committed the crime, but is responsible for the subsequent cover-up. Graham first told authorities that she last saw her husband in the back seat of a car leaving their driveway, according to the affidavit.
Days later, Graham called authorities to report she'd found her husband dead at the bottom of that cliff.
According to court documents, when the park ranger commented it was odd place to locate a body, Graham said, "It was a place he wanted to see before he died.
ABC News' Ryan Owens contributed to this report.