(Newser) – He was a 57-year-old divorced man in Lafayette, Indiana, and she was a 49-year-old woman in nearby Fowler. On paper, or at least on Match.com, they were a perfect fit. Don Huckstep met Teri Deneka in person for the first time in October 2014, and they were engaged to be married about six months later, according to a fascinating true-crime story told in Indianapolis Monthly. They planned a pre-wedding trip to Italy, but three weeks before their departure, Huckstep received an abrupt text from Deneka. “I am not going to be around anymore," she wrote. "Please don’t call me or come by the house. Believe me I’m doing you a huge favor. Teri.” She refused to answer his texts in return, and it wasn't until a few days later that he learned why: It seems his former fiancee was a double murderer who killed herself as her lies began catching up to her.

Authorities now think Deneka killed a new husband named Milan Lekich in June 2013 when Lekich discovered she'd been secretly running up his credit cards. He'd been shot in the head, dismembered, and stuffed in a garbage can in their garage. The crime went undiscovered, but more than a year later, Lekich's suspicious family confronted Deneka about their missing relative. "She knew her goose was cooked," says Huckstep, who pieced it together after the fact. At that point, police say she fatally shot her mother (the motive is unclear) before killing herself with a drug overdose. Just prior to her suicide, she sent the breakup text to Huckstep, who has gone from feeling devastated to relieved. “This is the stuff you see on TV, and it happens to other people now and then," he tells the Monthly's Mary Milz. "But having been through it, I’m a lot more sympathetic.” Click for the full story. (Read more murder stories.)

