Original subtitles

I asked Morgan and Rod what does marriage mean to each of them. Morgan

with this. We will be together forever.

For God has sent Rod to me and he is my guardian angel.

And Rod concluded with this.

My only hope for my life is that I can be the man and husband and father that

Morgan and my future children deserve.

She really thought he was the love of her life. The prince charming.

It's going to be a fun honeymoon.

We were just really excited to start our life.

But unfortunately, at the start of our fairy tales, when our nightmare began.

Morgan looked at him to be her protector. But what you don't know, you

know.

A shocking event happens that changes everything.

He was no longer my husband. He was somebody completely different, somebody

ugly, somebody that I didn't know who it was, a stranger to me.

I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we

most and the deceptions that change everything.

Today we meet Morgan, who thought she had it all, a loving relationship with

high school sweetheart and the promise of a bright future.

But after a series of tragic events, that promise turned into peril.

Morgan, what are you hoping people learn from your story?

My hope is that women learn to speak up.

to see if the things that are going on in your relationship is healthy or not.

Yeah. Like, I generally started to believe it was me, that I was the

So I didn't say anything. I stopped trying to be heard.

My name is Morgan Metzer.

I grew up in Canton, Georgia.

We have an older brother. I'm the middle. And then Morgan's the baby

We have so many wonderful memories together.

All girls pretty much dream of finding their prince charming.

So we always, like, thought about, you know, who our boyfriend would be someday

or our husband.

And then when, of course, we met Rod, she felt like she found her prince.

Rod and I met when I was 14, he was 17, and we were high school sweethearts.

My first impression of Rod that he gave off is definitely the big man on campus.

Everywhere he went, everyone knew who he was.

He was extremely patient, funny, kind -hearted.

He had ambition.

He was pretty much the whole package, I guess you could say.

He made me feel like a princess.

Morgan wanted to be protected, and she looked at him to be her protector.

And so he kind of just took on that role.

Rodney's family came from a lot of money. They were very well to do.

Rod's parents would take a lot of their kids' friends on trips.

And on these trips, we were spoiled, given a very lavish lifestyle.

I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.

After high school, the couple, they're stronger than ever.

Morgan follows Rodney to Wyoming, where he's... training to be a mechanic, and

she goes to cosmetology school. And then they decide to move back to Georgia and

start their careers.

We grew together naturally as a couple.

Everything was still innocent and pure.

I don't ever recall them ever arguing.

They always got along.

From the very beginning, they've always been very happy.

Rod proposed to me after about six or seven years being together.

He asked me in front of my family with my grandmother's wedding ring.

I was 100 % sure I wanted to marry Rod.

Rod and Morgan, the importance of marriage supersedes our daily

We got married April 18, 2009.

I asked Morgan and Rod individually what does marriage mean to each of them, and

Rod had this to say. Marriage good.

Rod liked marriage.

The wedding was my dream. Everything I could have ever imagined.

It was a true fairy tale.

It was one of the most beautiful weddings I've ever seen.

You may kiss to your heart's content.

The family was so excited.

His brother Kevin's speech was wonderful.

One day I hope I can share the same love they have with a woman as great as

Morgan.

And for the first official time, Morgan, welcome to the family.

I cried.

It felt like royalty becoming Mithmatzer.

Before we got married, we did own a house together.

We resided there after the wedding.

It was so much fun getting to call him my husband.

They were happy. They were always doing things, and I felt like I had a brother

there, so it was nice.

Rod had no expectations from me.

He really didn't.

He just wanted me to do what I wanted to do, and I wanted to go hang out with

friends that night. He said, go out, go have fun. I'll see you later.

We were just overall really excited to start our life.

But unfortunately, at the start of our fairy tales, when our nightmare began.

Morgan and Rodney's marriage is almost picture perfect. And then a tragic event

changes everything.

Rod's brother passed away of leukemia.

Kevin's passing was very difficult for all of us. I can only imagine how it

Rod feel.

It was just him and his brother, you know, and to see the pain of losing a

sibling, it was difficult.

It affected both of them, but Rod was just very quiet. He was not sociable. He

was not fun.

This death was a test of how the couple would weather dark times together.

I was supportive. I tried to help guide him in different ways, therapy, just

talking, listening, asking what it is that he needs.

But Rodney started changing into somebody completely different.

It was like watching a slow, painful death.

After we lost Kevin, a really good bounce back, something exciting that

in the family was we got pregnant.

I feel like I got a glimpse of that old Rod.

He was the latest.

More excited that we were going to name him Kevin after his brother.

It was just exciting after so much of the heartache of losing Kevin that

something so wonderful was about to happen.

At 22 weeks, the couple received devastating news.

The baby has a congenital heart defect.

They did say he would need multiple heart surgeries, eventually possibly a

transplant. There was a lot of unknowns.

Nobody wants to hear that their baby is going to be sick or potentially need all

these treatments and surgeries and be in pain after they're born.

Right after I'd had Kevin, they let me hold him for a second. They took him

me pretty much immediately.

He was a week old when he had his first heart surgery.

I remember dropping to my knees and I said, God, either take him home

with you or let me bring him home.

And the next day,

is when God decided to answer my prayer, but decided to take him home with him.

It wrecked her. It wrecked her soul.

Any mother to lose a child is just unimaginable.

From what Morgan had shared with me and how Rod brought the loss of baby Kevin,

it was more of he just stayed busy.

He kept himself away, and she grieved by herself.

I feel like my sister handled it well, but she was devastated, and she wasn't

herself, nor was Rod.

So, yeah, it was awful.

As Morgan

continues to grieve the loss of her child, She gets some amazing news.

I got pregnant after the loss of Kevin about three months later.

It was just a gift that was sent from baby Kevin to them to be like, don't be

sad, you know, it's going to be okay. We've got a baby on the way, you know.

The first ultrasound, Kevin's doctor was in there and she looked at me and she

goes, of course, you would give me a high -risk pregnancy after Kevin.

You're having twins.

I handed Rod the ultrasound thing, and he's like, two? I said, yeah, and he's

just so excited.

Almost a year to the day of losing baby Kevin, Morgan gives birth to twins,

Mason and Amelia.

So after the twins were born, Morgan was a stay -at -home mom.

And that's when I could just tell that... Rod wasn't happy or he was going

through something, but it was something that she kind of kept private.

He struggled with sharing my time. Anything that took me away from taking

of him, he would get irritated. But it wasn't where people would notice it.

He was just like, honestly, just miserable and hating life.

He was a mechanic.

Rod was making countless mistakes.

Certain things went wrong.

Soon, Rodney was unemployed, but Morgan thought that they would be okay

financially.

We had an amazing home that was paid for outright.

He did have inheritance from a great aunt, but he eventually told me the

was gone.

I realized that Rod was waiting for his grandmother to die.

But when his grandmother passed away, he did not receive anything.

Then they get the notice that they're going to potentially be losing the

It put a strain on our relationship because that's, when he ran out of any

options to be able to provide for the house at all.

She was going to have to be the one to step up because he obviously couldn't.

So I started my own inferior design business, Chip Lap and Sugar.

It took off.

After the first year, I was voted the number one interior designer in Canton,

and I was still able to rock at being a mom.

We got to work together and run this business. It was so much fun.

They didn't lose their house.

We had more business than we knew what to do with.

Eventually, Rodney, he started working for my company as a handyman. He would

built -in bunk beds.

He'd make me floating shelves. He'd hang everything.

He didn't like being the worker.

In my opinion, I felt like, to me, Rodney would find ways to sabotage the

project. I would see something like the stupid curtain rods not having the right

measurements, even though that was your one job.

I would tell him to do something, and he would do it incorrectly.

He would convince me that I told him to do it that way, and it would be my

fault.

He had a hard time deciphering if what he was saying was true or not.

Looking back on it now, he definitely was gaslighting me.

Once Rod saw that I was able to become successful for our family and I had the

drive, he still wanted the control.

The way he spoke to me did change.

He wanted to degrade me. He wanted to make sure I knew who was in charge.

He would antagonize me.

And as soon as I would lose my cool is when he would go quiet.

And he'd start recording me and say, look at how crazy you're being.

Gaslighting was Rodney's M .O.

They can beat you down. I felt like a horrible mom. I felt like a horrible

provider. Overall, I didn't look forward to getting up every morning.

A lot was on her plate, but she wanted to protect her kid, make sure that they

didn't know that something was going on with mom.

One day, Rod and I were having a disagreement.

We were going up the stairs.

The kids were listening.

and all of a sudden, he's falling down the stairs.

And as soon as when he hit the bottom stairs, the kids were down there, and

like, Mom, push me down the stairs.

I felt as though Rod faked falling down the stairs to show the kids, Mommy did

hurt Daddy, to paint me ugly in their eyes.

Morgan could endure anything that Rodney was throwing at her, but then he

started manipulating the kids against her, and she realized she had to face

reality of her relationship.

I just, like, all right, that's it, I'm done.

Eleven years into their marriage, Morgan files for divorce.

When he found out I filed for divorce, Rod wasn't accepting of it. He would sit

outside my parents' house, calling me like crazy.

I mean, he really thought he was going to get me back.

But I wasn't going, I wasn't budging.

This is the only man that she's been with, and no matter how the relationship

was going, it was still hard.

But I think she knew that she deserved to be treated better, you know what I

mean? So I was proud of her for sticking up for her and her kid.

In December of 2020, the divorce was finalized.

He moved out, got an apartment, and they shared custody of the two kids.

I knew in my heart I had done the right thing, but I loved

my husband.

He was my best friend.

That year, the day after Christmas, I took the kids to see my sister in

for them to stay for a few weeks.

The kids wanted to come see me and stay at my home outside of Disney World.

When I got back, I was over at Nicole's house, and Rod had sent me an email,

something along the lines of, I think you should know this, and he attached

document from the doctor's diagnosis.

I think I dropped my phone and I was like, oh, my God.

The father of my children has pancreatic cancer.

I mean, he was telling me it was stage four and he was going to die.

She was distraught.

It was, oh, my God, my children's father.

My emotions were all over the place.

I remember just dropping everything and left Nicole's house and went to his

apartment.

He said he was extremely scared.

He didn't want to tell his parents. He wasn't comfortable being alone.

And I said, okay, you can come and stay at the house.

Even though they were divorced, Morgan still loved Rodney, and she wanted to be

supportive. So she let him stay with her for a few days.

On the day of New Year's Eve, my parents came over and approached Rod and said

that we do need to call your parents.

and tell them about your diagnosis.

He left very angry.

New Year's Eve, I mean, we talked for a little bit. I was telling her about what

the kids and I were going to be doing. I just knew that she was going to

Nicole's house, so it was nothing unusual.

I did get text messages from Rod.

He wanted to hang out, but I told him.

I'm going to be staying at my parents' house tonight.

So that was never my intention.

I didn't want to see him.

It was my hope that he would leave me alone knowing that I was with my

When Morgan came over to my house, she was a lot more quiet than usual.

But then I realized that at the time it was my husband and I and then it was our

other friends.

So I understood it.

And then she went home.

That night, all I wanted to do was just curl up next to my dog and go to sleep

and wake up the next morning ready to start my fresh new year as a newly

divorcee.

The next time Morgan opens her eyes, she sees an image no one wants to see.

I saw a male figure standing in a lit -up doorway, dressed in black,

but I went to go, like, really, like, adjust my eyes is when he attacks.

I screamed the loudest I have ever screamed.

I thought it was over for me.

When the attacker attacked me, I was hit in the face countless times

with the butt of a gun.

I was strangled. I was sexually assaulted.

I had the gun pointed at my forehead.

I was fighting for my life.

He had a voice disguiser. It sounded like Batman.

I still hear his voice in my head.

He said, you've messed with the wrong people.

I couldn't help but think, okay, this is it. I'm done.

Still to this day, I get disappointed in myself when I say that I finally just

let go.

And I stopped.

All of a sudden, I had a sense of peace that just went all

over. And at that moment, he stopped strangling me.

That's when he proceeded to zip tie my hands behind my back.

He put a pillowcase over my head.

I was bleeding. I could feel the blood just going down my face.

He started asking where's my phone.

And I said, I don't know, it's somewhere in the bed.

And he found it, and he's like, what's the passcode? And I told him the

passcode.

And then all of a sudden, Morgan's attacker takes her to the back porch.

And says, don't move until you hear a car honk its horn two or three times.

That never happened.

Morgan is struggling to stay awake.

And finally, she hears footsteps. She doesn't know who it is.

And then, she hears Rodney's voice.

That was like, hello?

And he goes, what happened, what happened, what happened?

And I told him what happened.

He took me inside. He called the cops.

I'm right here, okay?

Right here.

Cherokee County 911.

Somebody broke in over here.

Okay, the person that broke in, are they still there?

Did you come home to them? We don't know.

I showed up, and I don't know.

She said, did someone broke into your house?

Yeah, it's not my house. It's my ex -wife's house.

She was on the back porch, and the back door was wide open. She was tied up with

a hood over her head.

You're saying she was tied up with a hood over her head?

Yes.

When he got off the phone with them, he's like, you know, it's fine.

I, you know, walked the house.

Nobody's here or anything like that.

But I was still scared.

I'm Dakota Livers.

At the time of this case, I was a detective in the Criminal Investigations

Division, specifically assigned in the Special Victims Unit.

When I initially arrived, Rodney Metzer was sitting in the driveway. As I walked

past him, he said, are you the guy that we've been waiting on? I said, yes, sir,

I am. And he looked me dead in the eyes and he said, do your job.

I was like, okay.

First investigative step that I wanted to do was get a scene size up. We were

able to find out that their children were actually in Florida, which was a

relief.

Morgan was in a shocked state. She was obviously beaten. She had bruising

her eye. She looked disheveled, as would somebody that had just went through an

incident like this.

There were no signs of forced entry into the house.

When Morgan detailed how the attacker had used her phone, we began looking at

the alarm system. We were able to look through the records. It showed Rodney

arriving, which is about the time the 911 call was made when Morgan was found.

But videos prior to that had been deleted or weren't there.

The last video was Morgan going inside.

Morgan detailed how the attacker made claims of your ex -husband is going to

miss you or, you know, he's next.

The attacker had to know Morgan had an ex -husband.

It's leading us to believe this is somebody close to Morgan that did this.

I set up two chairs on the front porch for Rodney and I to have a discussion.

They asked him how he came to be it.

Morgan's house.

And his explanation was incredible.

While brushing his teeth,

some mysterious person tapped on his window three times, and all that he

make out that they said was Morgan.

He believed that Morgan was in danger.

He took it upon himself to drive from his apartment to her house. His story

began to unfold as he was telling it because it did not line up with things

Morgan had already told him, such as there was no reason for him to come to

house looking for Morgan because Morgan told him she was going to stay the night

at her parents' house, which is not that house.

You knew she was here, which is why you came straight here and not there at her

parents' house.

The entire time, we were all open -minded that there might be another

suspect.

He said

maybe a new love interest

had done this to Morgan. However, all the evidence at this point was pointing

towards Rodney Metzer.

Rodney actually ended up giving us consent to look through his phone.

that time, we found pictures of text messages on another phone, and the other

phone happened to be Morgan's phone.

He also had pictures of her sleeping.

Detective Livers pulled me aside, and he asked me if I had given Rodney

permission to take a picture of my phone, and I told him no.

He had unlawfully gotten into Morgan's phone. That's a crime here in Georgia,

and they were able to arrest him that night for that crime.

But we still had our work ahead of

us to confirm or dispel if Rodney was our lead suspect.

or if there was some rando that did this.

Arresting Rodney gave us time to do further investigating into him, into his

story.

Starting the next day, I was tasked with obtaining search warrants for Rodney's

vehicle. He had a Volkswagen for his cell phone.

and for Rodney's apartment.

In the Volkswagen was a handwritten letter without that signature, but it

outlining the person having cancer and begging the recipient of that letter to

come back to him.

After we finished our search of Rodney's vehicle, myself and a number of other

detectives went to that apartment, did a very thorough search, and recovered

quite a few things of interest.

We seized his laptop computer.

We seized his wireless router.

And probably the strongest piece of evidence that we seized was a collection

new and one -cut, large industrial -size zip tie.

There was a stem from a zip tie that was missing the head.

So we examined the zip ties that were used to bind Morgan's hands together,

there happened to be an extra head on one of the stems.

One of our evidence technicians.

did what's called a fracture match examination.

You look under magnification and you're able to see all the jagged cuts and you

can actually move those together and you can confirm or conclude whether they

were once one piece or they're not even related.

It was a perfect match.

We scanned the barcode of those zip ties and...

We were able to see that this was a brand sold exclusively by Lowe's Home

Improvement.

Sergeant Harris found surveillance footage of Rodney buying

just those zip ties and

walking out of Lowe's.

And this was in the height of COVID. He was the only one in there not wearing a

mask. So you could clearly identify that it was Rodney.

As the evidence against Rodney is piling up, detectives uncover something

chilling inside Rodney's search history.

In the search of his laptop, I found numerous search phrases and

topics that he had been looking up in the days and weeks before this home

invasion.

Among those search phrases were things like how to disguise your voice, various

entries on cancer, pancreatic cancer, treatment for cancer.

But also he was researching letters that would be mailed out that have

to do with cancer care.

He had made searches for...

how long to strangle someone before they go unconscious.

There was a book of seven ways to be her hero found at his apartment that gave

us the motive of why this attack was done and why Rodney did this. It was all

win her back.

To show her, you need me at that house, we without a doubt believed

Rodney was the one that conducted this attack.

After we gathered all this evidence, we brought Rodney back to the Criminal

Investigations Division headquarters to conduct a follow -up interview.

Sergeant Harris actually second -chaired with me in that interview. I

let Rodney know, hey, listen, we're still investigating this incident

Morgan. We had yet to tell him anything about what we have done, what we have

found. We asked Rodney about any particular diagnoses.

he might have, specifically cancer.

His pancreatic cancer diagnosis, he ultimately told us, was fake.

That helped him achieve some sympathy from Morgan.

And in the days following, he was able to manipulate his way into her house,

where he eventually would spend the night and sleep on the sofa.

I asked Rodney about some of his Internet search history, specifically

disguising his voice, because Morgan described the attacker as how Christian

Bale sounded in the movie The Dark Knight.

Has there been a time recently where you were interested in how you can change

the sound of your voice?

It was funny to hear him say that he feels like he

doesn't have a masculine enough voice. I thought that was amazing.

By the time we revealed that we had his zip ties, his whole demeanor changed,

partially because he was surprised that he had forgotten to get rid of the zip

ties, but also because the zip ties were such a...

critical piece of evidence and he knew that he was in trouble.

By January the 3rd, we had conducted enough investigation that I was able to

take additional charges on Rodney for what happened to Morgan.

And among those charges were home invasion in the first degree, aggravated

assault by strangulation, kidnapping, armed robbery, and burglary.

My name is Rachel Ash. I'm the Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney for

Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit.

During our initial interactions with Morgan, she was struggling with the idea

that this could be this person who she had loved since they were teenagers.

He was no longer my husband. He was somebody completely different, somebody

ugly, somebody that I didn't know who it was, a stranger to me.

What she had gone through was so violent.

She was afraid he was going to come back and he was going to kill her.

When I found out that Rod was the one that did this, I was in a state of

All I know is I'm looking at her kids and I'm like, oh my gosh, like, thank

they were with me.

Once I got the kids home, I sat them down and I said, guys, daddy did

very bad.

And he's going to be in trouble for a large portion of your life.

Rodney Metzer was indicted on 14 separate charges.

The sheriff's office investigation was so strong that this was a case that was

leading to a plea. He would not have had any chance at trial.

Ultimately, Rodney Metzer pled guilty to all of the counts in the indictment.

He was sentenced for a total period of 70 years with the first 25 years of

being in custody.

As part of his sentence, he's ordered to have no contact of any kind with Morgan

or his children.

I don't know if what he got was fair or not.

Sometimes I think 25 years, okay, that's more than enough time. But the day is

going to come where he's going to get out.

I feel like that's why I sometimes wish the sentencing was longer, because I

don't want to come to that day.

But I know it's going to happen.

At the sentencing hearing, you were able to give a victim impact statement. Can

you tell me a little bit about that experience and why you decided to do

I wanted to have the last word.

I didn't want him to think he broke me because I hadn't been heard for so many

years, and finally he had to sit there and listen to me. So I felt like I

finally found my voice again by walking up there and speaking.

Rod, I hope you make your mental life a priority during this time of isolation.

Thank you for the gift of my children, and my heart aches for the fact you'll

missing out on first dates.

Homecomings, proms, the hormonal changes into adults, graduations, Christmas

morning, driver's licenses, college acceptance letters, first apartments,

jobs, proposals, weddings, and the potential birth of our grandkids and so

others.

But what disheartens me more is not only are we missing these milestones, but

I'll have to look into Amelia and Mason's eyes as each of these milestones

place.

and see the want and the desire for their father to have been there.

Our kids know what happened that night you attacked me.

We didn't ask for this, Rod.

Why didn't you let me help you when I begged and pleaded to be better for our

family? It's time to let you go and lay you down to rest.

Goodbye, Rod.

Once I stepped off the podium, I felt empowered that some weight was lifted

my shoulders.

I get it.

I really do.

All the way up until a few years after the incident, I still believed some of

the things that Rod had told me, the kind of person I was.

I had to, like, reprogram my brain.

She grew up with him, and I think it's hard because what she had known of was

normal for 20 years of her life was really manipulation and gaslighting at

finest. It's a lot of trauma.

I feel the trauma.

There's stages you have to go through. It took me a few years to get to the

point that I realized I needed a little bit extra help to cope with the

situation.

Morgan went to counseling. She went to therapy.

She went to a PDSV rehab facility for six weeks or so.

She did everything and continues to do everything she can to be the most

healthiest version of herself.

Morgan has grown and evolved by being more self -aware and not having to find

protector and realizing that she can be her own protector and that she doesn't

need anybody.

There's so many different aspects.

I hope people can learn from my story.

Mental health awareness, narcissistic abuse and signs.

And my biggest one is, as women, we need to learn to speak to each other and not

sugarcoat everything.

Because had maybe I spoke up a little bit more, I may have gotten the help

earlier.