MINNEAPOLIS—In a murder his accusers say was fuelled by infidelity and deceit, a northern Minnesota artist admitted in court Wednesday that he fatally crushed his wife with a five-metre-tall totem pole they were carving.

Carl Muggli, 51, pleaded guilty to killing 61-year-old Linda Muggli in November 2010 at the couple’s home south of International Falls, Minn. The husband had tried to convince authorities that the 700-pound pole accidentally fell out of a cradle and onto his wife of 24 years.

The couple’s business website, which still is active, has read since Linda Muggli’s death, “She passed while doing what she loved.”

Muggli is pleading guilty to second-degree unintentional murder. He had been charged with first-degree premeditated murder and second-degree intentional murder. His trial was to begin Monday and be held in Bemidji, Minn., but pretrial publicity resulted in it being moved to the International Falls area.

“This whole thing is a tragic occurrence,” said defence lawyer Charles Hawkins, who explained that his client chose to plead guilty because “he did not want to put the family, his family or himself through any more misery.”

Carl Muggli remains in the county jail ahead of sentencing on Feb. 4.

On Nov. 26, 2010, a sheriff’s deputy called to the couple’s garage found Linda Muggli on the floor, bleeding from the mouth but still breathing. She was taken to a hospital, where she died. Later that day, Carl Muggli told a deputy a totem pole the couple had been working on fell out of its cradle and onto his wife.

But about a week later, a tipster told the Sheriff’s Office about Facebook entries between Muggli and a woman in Alabama that were “very intimate in nature.”

A state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent reviewed Muggli’s computer and uncovered Facebook messages between him and the woman that stretched from more than a month before Linda Muggli’s death to a few days afterward.

“I love you with all my being. ... I want us together to live our lives as we seek. For I am with you. I am yours. We are one!” Muggli wrote the day before Linda Muggli’s death to the woman he called “Eveningstar.”

He also began sending emails to real estate companies in Texas, looking for a new place to live. On Nov. 30, a few hours after his wife’s memorial service, Muggli sent the woman an online link for property in Palestine, Texas.