Insets, left to right: Michael Hogue (Boone County Sheriff’s Office), Kevin Nikel (Berna Funeral Homes), and Amanda Penny (BCSO). Background: The Boone County Sheriff’s Office (Google Maps).
A 40-year-old woman in Arkansas and her 51-year-old boyfriend are accused of killing her ex-husband and the father of her child only three days after her divorce was finalized and she was denied custody.
Amanda Penny and Michael Hogue were taken into custody this week on charges of first-degree murder and unlawful possession of a firearm in the slaying of Kevin Nikel earlier this year, authorities announced.
Nikel was a former WWE wrestler who competed under the name Knuckles Madsen.
According to a news release from the Benton County Sheriff’s Office, on the night of July 11, deputies responded to a report of a shooting along Highway 12, near Rogers. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders said they located an adult male, later identified as Nikel, suffering from an apparent gunshot wound to the stomach.
Agents with the U.S. Marshal Service (USMS) later located Hogue in Fort Smith and Penny in Rogers, placing both under arrest, the release states.
Court documents state that Nikel was the primary caregiver of the couple’s son until the day he was allegedly killed by Hogue, who was “the cohabitating romantic partner of Amanda Penny,” attorneys for Nikel’s mother wrote in filings seeking to take custody of the child.
In addition to revealing there was a court order prohibiting contact between Hogue and the child of Penny and Nikel, court documents also claimed that Nikel was to maintain primary custody of the boy until Penny was able to pass a hair follicle drug test, which she had not done as of July 11.
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Nikel’s mother, Susan Kinderman, who earlier this year was awarded custody of her grandson, told Fort Smith CBS affiliate KFSM that even after the arrests, she still has many unanswered questions about why her son was killed.
“We still don’t know exactly what happened when he got shot. The detectives have been pretty close lipped on that, which is good, but we’d still like to know exactly what happened and who did what,” she told the station.
Kinderman was reportedly told that some kind of argument took place between the two men that led to Hogue shooting Nikel. The argument may have began via text messages.
“There was some kind of an argument. Maybe there was texting going back and forth,” she said. “I think they enticed Kevin to meet up with them. I was told by the detectives that there was some kind of altercation. Shots were fired, and Kevin was killed, and that’s all we really know.”
Nikel’s obituary says that his son was “his entire world” and that he will be missed “by everyone who knew him personally or attended one of his shows.”
Both of the defendants were being held in the Benton County Jail without bond as of Tuesday. It was not immediately clear when they were scheduled to make their initial court appearances.
