Police say officers found a pickup truck backed to the garage and signs the body had been dragged from inside the home.

MOUNT WASHINGTON, Ky. — A 67-year-old Kentucky man is accused of killing his wife and trying to move her body into a pickup truck before officers reached the couple’s home on March 6, according to police and court records.

Authorities say the case turned on what officers saw when they pulled up to a house on Williamsburg Court shortly after 9 p.m. Friday: Richard L. Chesher at the open garage, blood on his clothes, hands and face, and the body of his wife, Bonnie Chesher, on the floor nearby. The allegations quickly led to charges of murder involving domestic violence, tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse. By Monday, a judge had set a $1 million cash bond, placing the case on a fast public path from a neighborhood call to a homicide prosecution.

According to the arrest account cited by local news outlets, Mount Washington police were dispatched to the 100 block of Williamsburg Court at about 9:20 p.m. for an investigation. When officers arrived, they said, Richard Chesher was standing at or near the garage door and appeared to be covered in blood. Police say he tried to shut the garage door as they came up, but officers could still see a body on the floor. Bonnie Chesher was identified at the scene as his wife. Richard Chesher was detained without incident. From the start, the case stood out not only because of the killing allegation but because officers said the garage appeared to be set up for movement: a pickup truck was backed toward the opening, and boards had been placed as a makeshift ramp to the truck bed.

Investigators said the evidence at the house suggested the fatal attack did not begin in the garage. Officers reported finding a trail of blood leading from inside the home into the garage, a detail that pointed them back into the residence as they reconstructed what had happened. They also reported locating what was described as a club-like or large piece of wood with apparent blood on it. Police said Bonnie Chesher had injuries so severe around the face and head that she was difficult to identify by appearance. Authorities also said her body had been wrapped with or bound in a garden hose. In the arrest narrative carried by local outlets, investigators believed the hose may have been used to drag the body from the interior of the house into the garage. Police have not publicly laid out a minute-by-minute account of the confrontation inside the home, and no public filing available in early reports described a motive.

The setting added to the shock around the case. Mount Washington, in Bullitt County south of Louisville, is a fast-growing community where violent crimes of this kind are not the norm on quiet residential streets. The house on Williamsburg Court became the center of a homicide scene that, according to the police description, stretched from inside the residence into the garage. Even in the first round of reporting, the details were unusually specific: blood leading through the home, a wood object believed to be the weapon, the truck positioned at the door, and a ramp assembled from boards. Together, those details shaped the early public understanding of the allegation that Bonnie Chesher was killed inside the home and then moved. The case also entered the court system almost immediately, turning what neighbors first saw as a police response on a Friday night into a closely watched local criminal case by the start of the next week.

Chesher was booked into the Bullitt County Detention Center on charges of murder-domestic violence, tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse. Local reports said he made his first court appearance on Monday, March 9, when a judge set bond at $1 million cash. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for March 17. That hearing is expected to be one of the first formal chances for prosecutors to outline the basis for the charges in open court, though the evidence presented at that stage can still be limited. It was not clear from the early public reports whether additional forensic testing had been completed on the wood found at the scene, whether an autopsy report had been released, or whether prosecutors planned to seek an indictment immediately after the preliminary stage. Those questions are likely to shape the next phase of the case.

Neighbors and other residents were left to absorb the violence of the allegations against the backdrop of an otherwise ordinary street. One nearby resident told local television the case was “concerning” and said she felt sadness for both the family and the neighborhood. That reaction tracked with the way the case unfolded publicly: not through a long search or a later arrest, but in a single encounter at a garage door where officers said the suspect and the victim’s body were both in plain view. In that sense, the scene itself became the story’s central witness. Police have not publicly said whether anyone else was in the home at the time of the attack or whether a 911 caller reported specific sounds or signs of violence before officers arrived.

The case stood, as of the latest reports, with Richard Chesher jailed in Bullitt County on a $1 million cash bond and a preliminary hearing set for March 17, the next public milestone in a prosecution that began with officers arriving at a garage mid-scene.

Author note: Last updated April 2, 2026.