TN v. Matthew Konen

On January 20, 2021, Rachel Konen, 30, and her father, David Rodgers, 62, died inside the family’s home on Westwood Drive in Clarksville, Tennessee. Rachel was shot once in a hallway. David Rodgers, a grandfather who had been playing with his grandchildren that afternoon, was beaten and died of blunt force injuries to the head. Rachel’s husband, Matthew Konen, a Nashville paramedic in the middle of a divorce, was the only adult who walked out alive. He called 911 and told the dispatcher that his father-in-law had shot his wife and then tried to shoot him. He has said the same ever since.

The State did not accept that account. It charged Konen with two counts of first-degree murder in May 2021, dropped the case in October 2023 saying the proof was not there yet, and brought it back through a grand jury in May 2025. After a trial of about three weeks, a Montgomery County jury returned two different verdicts on October 8, 2026. On the count for David Rodgers it found Konen guilty of first-degree murder as charged. On the count for Rachel Konen it found him guilty only of the lesser offense of criminally negligent homicide. Sentencing is set for January 13, 2027.

The jury has spoken, and the verdict is theirs. Konen pleaded not guilty, his defense was that Rodgers fired the shot and that he acted in self-defense, and the law still gives him every avenue of review it gives anyone. What the record leaves to examine is how the State built its motive from an affair, a divorce and a life insurance policy, how the defense answered with a possible misfire, a limp-wrist test and a father-in-law with a history of depression, and what a split verdict does and does not tell us. Start with the background report below, then follow the Konen Trial Story.