A Kansas City, Missouri,-area man charged with strangling his wife said he did it because he couldn’t take care of her or afford her medical bills, according to court records.

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A statement published by prosecutors on Saturday said Ronnie Wiggs, 75, had accompanied his wife to a hospital in Independence, Missouri so that she could receive a new medical port device for her kidney dialysis.

Then, according to Wiggs, he covered her nose and mouth to keep from screaming while she was in bed and strangled her, KSHB reported.

Prosecutors then said that Wiggs left the hospital, but returned when employees found his wife unresponsive. She was resuscitated but declared brain dead. She died on Saturday.

Within earshot of at least one hospital staffer, Wiggs admitted, “I did it. I killed her. I choked her,” the news station KCTV reported, citing a sworn police statement filed in court.

After Wiggs was taken to the police station, he told investigators that he could neither take care of his wife nor afford her medical bills any longer, the prosecutors’ statement said.

Wiggs said he had tried to kill his wife earlier while she was at a rehabilitation facility, but she woke up and told him not to do that again, the statement said.

He said he was planning to kill his wife on another occasion when she was hospitalized, but he didn’t get the chance because she was hooked up to several monitors.

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