CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The husband of a slain state insurance investigator said Wednesday he felt sure his wife was dead from the moment he learned she was missing — and that he's been going through a "living hell" ever since.
Sallie Rohrbach's body was found Tuesday in a wooded area in Fort Mill, S.C. Authorities have charged the owner of an insurance agency she was sent to audit with killing her.
"I had known for a couple of days that that phone call was coming," Tim Rohrbach told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "It wasn't a surprise to me. But you can never prepare yourself for something like this. I wasn't ready for it."
"It's torturous," he said softly. "I can't describe it other than being a living hell."
Prosecutors have charged insurance agency owner Michael Howell, 40, with first-degree murder. Rohrbach, a 44-year-old investigator with the state Insurance Department, was reviewing the books at Howell's business when she disappeared last week.
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Tim and Sallie Rohrbach met while students at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. Married for 24 years, they had no children, but Rohrbach said his wife took in three stray dogs and four cats.
"I'm not much of a people person, but she was," he said. "She was a joy to be around."
Rohrbach said his wife was filling in for another insurance investigator when she left the couple's home in Angier, about 20 miles south of Raleigh, for the assignment in Charlotte. Rohrbach said his wife sent him an e-mail Tuesday night, and that was the last time he heard from her. She didn't suggest in the note that anything was amiss.
"We do a lot of landscaping and we have stuff going on all the time," he said. "Typically when we e-mail back and forth, that's usually what it's all about. Tuesday's e-mail had more to do with resurfacing our driveway ... and I was updating her on what I was going to do next," he said.
When Rohrbach didn't hear from his wife during the next few days, he wasn't worried: He knew she was busy with the audit and had plans to visit with friends in Charlotte. Rohrbach said he expected her return early Friday afternoon, so he took off from work early to greet her.
When he got home, he got a call from the Insurance Department.
"They asked if I had seen her or spoken with her. Then they told me the news," he said. "They said they usually communicated with her daily and had not heard from her, and they had already been worried a couple of days.
"At that point, I knew something was very very wrong."
Rohrbach said he frantically called friends and then police. He said he couldn't sleep Friday night before heading to Charlotte on Saturday morning to meet with police. They began a massive ground search and interviewed Howell, who said he last saw Rohrbach on Wednesday.
When police discovered her car in a fast-food restaurant Sunday morning, they knew there was trouble. Police told him they suspected something had happened to his wife, but at that point, "I had lost hope," Rohrbach said.
The cause of her death remains unclear, even after an autopsy. The Mecklenburg County medical examiner's office announced Wednesday night that she died from "homicide of undetermined means."
Chrissy Pearson, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Insurance, said she couldn't discuss the complaint that prompted the audit of Howell's business. But two former customers said they paid Howell, who then failed to forward the money to their insurance providers.
"I didn't know anything until my insurance company sent me a notice that they were canceling my insurance for nonpayment," said Nicki Smith, 34, a home health care worker. "I tried calling him but he never answered my calls."
Smith said she didn't file a complaint, but Pearson said such a report would have prompted an Insurance Department investigation.
Howell made an initial appearance in court Thursday and asked a judge for a public defender, a request that was denied by a judge who said he had enough money to pay for his own defense. It wasn't clear Wednesday if he had retained a private attorney.
