GRAND TRAVERSE COUNTY, MI -- When Michael Rode called 911, he was very polite.

But what he said was shocking.

"Ma'am, I just killed my wife," an out-of-breath Rode told a Grand Traverse County 911 dispatcher on Saturday, June 6.

"You just killed your wife?" a startled dispatcher asks.

In the moments that follow, Rode describes a $400 bill that his 72-year-old wife allegedly failed to pay, as the anger-sparking trigger.

The 51-year-old Traverse City man is now charged with murder.

In the 911 call, he tells the dispatcher that he first used a frying pan, then a knife, to harm Sandra Rode.

"She turned around and pushed me and shoved me, you know," Rode says on the call.

"What happened, what did you do to her?" the dispatcher asks.

Related: Man accused in frying pan attack, slaying of wife is held without bond

"OK, I had a frying pan, you know. And then I, then I went and I got a knife. I did," he says.

In the call, Rode admits to stabbing his wife. The dispatcher tells him she wants to see if his wife can be helped medically.

"Oh, I think she's dead, ma'am," he says.

When officers arrived about two minutes after the 911 call was made, they found the woman dead inside the couple's home at Tradewinds Terrace Apartments on Fitzhugh Drive in Traverse City.

She had been choked, struck with a cast iron frying pan and stabbed several times, according to the police report.

Michael Rode allegedly told police the couple had argued over an unpaid $400 bill and a relative's life insurance policy.

E-mail John Tunison: jtunison@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/johntunison