ORLANDO, Fla. (Court TV) — A Florida man on trial for killing his wife admits to pulling the trigger, but says he was acting in self-defense.
Timothy Kramer, 53, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree premeditated murder and aggravated animal cruelty in the death of his wife, Rosa Kramer.
Timothy Kramer appears in court on Aug. 4, 2026. (Court TV)
Rosa Kramer’s sister called the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office on July 23, 2024, when the victim failed to return home to take their father to a doctor’s appointment. Rosa Kramer had moved out of the home she shared with Timothy Kramer two weeks before her death and had only returned to the property that morning to retrieve some items she had left behind, her sister told deputies.
Hours after she was last seen, Rosa Kramer’s sister received unusual messages purporting to be from the missing victim, claiming she had gone to the beach and that Timothy Kramer “did nothing but give me my stuff and I left.”
Investigators tracked Timothy Kramer down at his sister’s house in Milton. The defendant’s sister informed deputies that her brother had admitted to shooting his wife in the head, but claimed that he had acted in self-defense.
When deputies arrived at the couple’s property, they found blood on the tile floor in various locations. A medium-sized dog was found “severely injured and malnourished.” As officers continued to search the home, they eventually found Rosa Kramer’s body in a back bedroom. She was lying on the floor between the bed and a wall with multiple gunshot wounds.
Prosecutor Amy Shea told the jury in opening statements on Tuesday that Timothy Kramer plotted his wife’s murder. “He’s trying to get her to come see him. He’s desperate,” Shea said. “He lures her to the house with the promise of returning certain items that had belonged to her deceased mother. And he tells her to come first thing in the morning so ‘we don’t have to see each other’ because he would still be at work.”
Shea said that Timothy Kramer left work early to make sure he would see the victim, and parked his truck around the back of the house so that he could hide. Minutes after the victim arrived at the property, Shea said, the defendant began incessantly calling his sister. A text from his sister 30 minutes later read, “Tim, you told me you killed her. I cannot be an accessory to this. I have a fiance and his daughter to think about.”
Timothy Kramer’s defense attorney, Andrew Benson, outlined a starkly different version of events for jurors: He conceded that his client had shot and killed his wife, but said that the defendant feared for his life when he fired.
Benson said the couple was struggling with a broken marriage when Rosa Kramer arrived at the house upset and insistent on buying the property from her estranged husband. When Timothy Kramer refused, Benson said, Rosa Kramer began attacking him by punching him and kicking him in the knees. “In full survival mode, Tim pushes Rosa back, rushes toward the gun, staggers there, grabs it as Rosa regains her footing and charges at him again. Tim quickly fires in Rosa’s direction,” Benson told the jury. “What happened here was a tragedy, but Rosa left him with no other choice.” Benson said that the victim had a “black belt” while the defendant had “bad knees and a bad back.”
While prosecutors accused Timothy Kramer of shooting both his wife and the dog, Benson said that the dog got between the couple when the defendant pulled the trigger, causing bullets to pass through the dog and into his wife. The dog survived the injuries. Rosa Kramer was shot four times, with two bullets hitting her in the head, one in her side and one in her knee.
