John Tabbutt shot and killed his fiancee, Nancy Dinsmore, in the Winter Springs home they shared on Oct. 9, just one day before they were to be married.
It was the middle of the night, and he thought she was an intruder, he told police.
On Tuesday, a Seminole County grand jury will hear testimony and decide whether Tabbutt should be charged with manslaughter.
Some of Dinsmore's family members say they're suspicious, especially about how her life savings disappeared in the months before her death.
Authorities, who initially described the shooting as an accident, have spent months tracking down bank, insurance and brokerage transactions.
Grand jurors must sort it all out.
Tabbutt, 63, who still lives in the gray and white stucco house where the shooting took place, did not return phone calls to the Orlando Sentinel.
Prosecutors have not accused Tabbutt of plotting to kill Dinsmore. Instead, they question whether he used the "ordinary caution" that a reasonable person would when he hears an intruder.
Tabbutt owned a .38-caliber handgun and told police he picked it up when he heard a suspicious noise about 2:30 a.m.
But he grabbed the gun while getting out of the bed he shared with Dinsmore, said Assistant State Attorney Chris White. Tabbutt did not confirm whether she was still in it beside him, something a reasonable person might be expected to do, White said.
Then this 6-foot-2 man shot and killed a short figure in the hallway. Dinsmore was 5 feet tall.
For a time, Tabbutt cooperated with authorities, said Assistant State Attorney James Carter, but then he stopped answering questions. It's not clear whether he'll testify before the grand jury.
The night of the shooting, he called 911, crying and sobbing into the phone.
"I thought I had an intruder in the house," he told a dispatcher.
He fired once, and the bullet hit Dinsmore, 62, in the chest. She was pronounced dead shortly after emergency personnel arrived.
Difficult case
The case has been a tough one for authorities. Police took six months to conclude their investigation, said Winter Springs police Chief Kevin Brunelle. They turned over their findings in early May to the State Attorney's Office in Sanford, but Brunelle would not say what his agency recommended.
He did say this: Officers found no evidence of premeditation.
The State Attorney's Office also would not say what police recommended nor would it confirm that it would present evidence to a grand jury Tuesday.
Much of the investigation's delay was caused by a check into the couple's financial records. "We had to subpoena them all," Brunelle said.
Dinsmore was a Maine widow who had retired from a telephone company and operated an adoption agency when she met Tabbutt in 2007 on match.com, said her sister and then-business partner, Mary Guiseley of Raymond, Maine.
The couple fell in love; Dinsmore retired, moved into Tabbutt's Winter Springs home, and they traveled a great deal, according to her family.
A year before she died, Dinsmore changed her will, giving Tabbutt money and legal power, according to her probate file. She named him beneficiary of a $50,000 life insurance policy and named him personal representative of her estate.
Two months after her death, though, he signed away control of the estate to Dinsmore's brother, Garry Zeegers, of Naples, Maine, and the life insurance company paid the death benefits to Dinsmore's two adult daughters, family members say.
According to paperwork filed in her probate case in January, her family is considering a wrongful-death suit.
The family's probate attorney, David Yergey Jr., did not return phone calls.
Some family members are suspicious of Tabbutt. When Dinsmore began seeing Tabbutt, she was worth about $240,000, Guiseley said. When she died, she had $1,100 in the bank, Guiseley said.
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