Prosecutors say Colorado husband and wife kept lover's body for months, spent his money

A Colorado couple received identical five-year prison sentences for stashing a man's body under a deflated air mattress for almost a year and a half while collecting and spending the man's Social Security benefits. 

The couple told detectives they were in a "three-way relationship" with man when he died sometime in December 2023. 

Suzanne Agnew, 58, was sentenced Monday to five years in the Colorado Department of Corrections. She had pleaded guilty in June to tampering with a deceased human body and identity theft, both felonies. Five other felonies were dismissed by prosecutors as part of the plea agreement. 

Her husband, 57-year-old James Agnew, faced the same charges and made the same plea agreement months earlier. He received the same sentence in April. 

At Suzanne Agnew's sentencing hearing, Senior Deputy District Attorney Trevor Moritzky described her conduct as calculated.

"This was not panic. This was not confusion. This was a long-term course of deception that required repeated, conscious decisions to continue the fraud and maintain the concealment," Moritzky said, as recounted by the 1st Judicial District Attorney's Office in a press release. "This was a sustained violation of law, decency, and humanity."

James O'Neill's body was found in the couple's Lakewood home in July 2025. His brother had contacted police and requested they check on him. Those officers met a man at the home who identified himself as James O'Neill.

The officers replayed bodycam video of their encounter to O'Neill's brother, who told detectives the man in the video was not his brother. 

Investigators tracked spending on O'Neill's debit card. It was used at two 7-Eleven stores in Lakewood. Surveillance video from the stores showed a man using the debit card who looked like James Agnew, and not James O'Neill, according to the arrest affidavit. 

When detectives showed up at the home with a search warrant, Suzanne Agnew told them where they would find O'Neill's body, per the affidavit. She also said she, her husband and O'Neill had lived together for many years. But one night in December 2023, she woke up and could not find a pulse on O'Neill.

She and James Agnew "could tell for sure that he was dead," as recounted in the affidavit, and they decided against calling the police "because she was not ready to 'give up' Jim." She told detectives that "she believed he may have died from some kind of medical issue since he was in very poor health."

James Agnew, according to the affidavit, later admitted to detectives that he was aware of O'Neill's Social Security income and said it was "definitely a consideration in deciding whether or not to report his death."

Investigators estimated the Agnews spent more than $17,000 of O'Neill's money.    

An official cause of O'Neill's death was never determined. The condition of his remains was too degraded to allow for accurate testing.

Suzanne Agnew spoke via remote connection at her sentencing, according to the DA's office.

She told the court, "I deeply regret the hurt, damage, and uncertainty that my actions have caused."   

O'Neill's brother also spoke at Suzanne Agnew's hearing, according to a press release from the district attorney, stating, "Jim was not just a body under an air mattress. She did not just hide his body; she stole our chance to grieve him."

The DA's press release also stated that District Court Judge Meegan Miloud called Suzanne Agnew's crimes "morally reprehensible" before the five-year sentence was imposed. 

Afterward, Suzanne Agnew began serving her prison term at the Denver Women's Correctional Facility, the largest of the two women's prisons in Colorado's system. James Agnew is housed at the Sterling Correctional Facility.