text: John Heath in the Danbury Superior Court House for Heath's arraignment on a murder charge for the death of Heath's wife, Elizabeth, 28 years ago in Newtown. 
   
   The husband of a woman whose body was found inside a well under a barn in Newtown pleaded not guilty to a murder charge on Tuesday and is being held on $1 million bond. 
   
   John Heath, 68, of Bridgewater, was charged with the murder of his wife, Elizabeth Gough Heath,on Monday. He appeared in court wearing oxygen tubes, the News-Times reports. 
   
   Heath, whose daughter lives in Puerto Rico, according to the News-Times, was ordered to hand in his passport. 
   
   Prosecutors said officials acted quickly to arrest Heath after a moving truck was spotted at his house over the weekend. 
   
   Elizabeth Gough Heath was reported missing in April 1984, just days after John Heath filed for divorce. She was 30 years old at the time. 
   
   John Heath reported his wife missing on April 6, 1984. According to court records, he told police she took off with $600 cash, but told several friends she left with no money. 
   
   A father and son found Elizabeth Gough Heath’s remains in April 2010 as they were renovating the barn at 89 Poverty Hallow Road. 
   
   They were working on breaking through badly damaged flooring when they found a covered well. Inside were pillows, a blanket, a pillow case and a bag containing what looked like a human femur. 
   
   Elizabeth had been wrapped in bedding and placed head-first into the hole in the barn with a plastic bag covering her skull, according to court records. 
   
   When police questioned John Heath, he said he renovated the barn in 1990 and used a jackhammer to open hole in floor to put a cast iron pipe under concrete, according to information from court. During the renovation, a relative asked him about what was under a concrete lid in the barn and he said it was an old septic tank and to leave it alone. 
   
   When police told John Heath that Elizabeth had a broken forearm and the bone was smashed, Heath said "Smashed like a..." He didn't finish the sentence but raised and lowered his hands as he said "smashed" as if he was holding something, according to court records. 
   
   The medical examiner previously ruled Elizabeth's death a homicide. She died from four blows to the head, the medical examiner determined. 
   
   Her left arm was broken, which authorities said was consistent with a defensive wound, and there was a traumatic amputation of her maxilla. 
   
   Land records show that John Heath owned the property until 2005, when he lost the property to foreclosure. 
   
   John Heath's friends said he was a Vietnam Veteran with a volatile temper and still very disturbed by what he encountered in Vietnam. 
   
   Copyright Associated Press / NBC Connecticut ||||| Heath pleads not guilty in wife's death John Heath: Charged in 1984 murder of his estranged wife, Elizabeth, whose remains were found in Newtown barn in 2010 
   
   John Heath's mug shot. Photo: Contributed Photo / Erin Cox John Heath's mug shot. Photo: Contributed Photo / Erin Cox Image 1 of / 28 Caption Close Heath pleads not guilty in wife's death 1 / 28 Back to Gallery 
   
   DANBURY --Twenty-eight years after telling police she had abandoned him and their 4-year-old daughter in the middle of the night, John Heath pleaded not guilty in state Superior Court on Tuesday morning to the crime friends and family members say they have long suspected he committed, the 1984 murder of his wife at their Poverty Hollow Road home in Newtown. 
   
   The 68-year-old, retired painting contractor was taken into custody by Newtown Police on Monday evening, two years after Elizabeth Heath's remains were found wrapped in bedclothes and stuffed head-first into a cistern beneath the floor of a former dairy barn the new property owner was renovating. 
   
   Newtown Police Chief Michael Kehoe said Tuesday that investigators obtained the arrest warrant for Heath late Monday afternoon, and eventually found him driving on Hannibal Road in Newtown. 
   
   "Obviously, we're pleased," Kehoe said Tuesday. "It's been an exhaustive investigation." 
   
   Breathing with the aid of an oxygen tank and wearing a gray, hooded sweatshirt, Heath was arraigned before Judge John Blawie, who rejected a request by his interim attorney, Public Defender Miles Gerety, to reduce the $1 million bond set when Heath was arrested. 
   
   More Information About John Heath Age: 68 Town: Bridgewater Charge: Murder of wife Elizabeth, in Newtown, on or about April 1, 1984 Bond: $1 million 
   
   State's Attorney Stephen Sedensky said the arrest warrant was issued after authorities were tipped about a moving truck outside Heath's rented home in Bridgewater over the weekend. Heath, his wife, Raquel, and their two children moved there after losing the Newtown property to foreclosure in 2005, triggering the sequence of events that led to the discovery of Elizabeth Heath's body in April 2010. 
   
   Blawie also ordered Heath to surrender his passport. 
   
   Gerety declined to comment after the brief hearing, as did Raquel Heath when she was besieged by reporters as she was leaving the courthouse. 
   
   After repeatedly responding to questions with, "No comment, no comment," she eventually asked one television reporter, ``Do you want me to sing it to you?" 
   
   For years, John Heath told family members and friends that his 32-year-old wife had vanished without explanation as he slept, leaving behind their daughter, her dogs, car and most of her belongings. 
   
   The couple were in the process of getting a divorce, but numerous people interviewed told investigators they had doubts about John Heath's story, and they said Elizabeth Heath would never have abandoned her daughter. 
   
   One former neighbor told investigators that Heath's daughter, Meghann, was "joined to her at the hip," police said in the warrant. 
   
   John Heath obtained the divorce in August 1984 and he married his current wife, who had been a friend of Elizabeth's and a babysitter for their daughter, the following June. 
   
   The 30-page arrest warrant affidavit includes, almost verbatim, many of the interviews police conducted during the lengthy investigation, shedding light on the couple's faltering, nearly six-year marriage and laying bare the suspicions of the couple's friends, neighbors and members of John Heath's family that he was responsible for her disappearance. 
   
   Even John Heath's own mother, who has since died, believed "something wasn't right, I know John did something to her," Elizabeth Heath's sister-in-law, Debbie Lewis, told investigators. 
   
   Lewis, who was married to John Heath's half-brother, said Elizabeth told her, "If anything happens to me, you know that John did it," according to the warrant. 
   
   Detectives also cited inconsistencies in the story John Heath told after Elizabeth disappeared, and quoted one of his current wife's cousins about Heath's response when the cousin asked what was beneath the hatchway in the barn floor while they were building a basement apartment in 1996. 
   
   "Heath stated it was septic and leave it alone," police quoted the cousin, Robert Rivera. 
   
   But most of the information contained in the lengthy document appears to be circumstantial, thin on the kind of forensic evidence that would conclusively tie a suspect to a crime. 
   
   Much of the potential forensic evidence had degraded over the years that the body lay hidden, making it impossible to recover DNA, Kehoe said. 
   
   "Time and environmental factors had a definite effect on what we could do," the chief said. "What we have is a totality of the circumstances. You want to ask the question, `Where did this young lady go and why would she leave her child?'" 
   
   An autopsy determined that Elizabeth Heath died of multiple blows to the head. She also suffered a broken arm, consistent with a defensive wound, according to the affidavit. 
   
   Blawie continued the case to May 16, allowing time for the appointment of a special public defender for Heath, Sedensky said. 
   
   Gerety can no longer continue to represent Heath because members of his staff had been police officers in Newtown, creating a conflict of interests, the prosecutor said. 
   
   Blawie set June 19 as the tentative date for a probable cause hearing in the case. 
   
   jpirro@newstimes.com; 203-731-3342
target: – A Connecticut man has pleaded not guilty after being charged in his wife's murder of nearly three decades ago. The remains of Elizabeth Heath were discovered two years ago in a well below a barn that once belonged to her husband. John Heath, 68, who used an oxygen tank in court, reported his wife missing in 1984, days after filing for divorce. He told friends and family she had left him and their daughter with no explanation while he was asleep, the Danbury News Times reports. But her dogs and most of her things—including her car—remained. Her body was discovered by a father and son who were renovating the barn in 2010, after John Heath lost it in a 2005 foreclosure. The body's left arm was broken; when police told Heath the bone had been smashed, he reportedly said, "Smashed like a..." and waved his arms up and down without finishing his sentence, NBC Connecticut reports. Heath was traumatized by his experience fighting in Vietnam, according to friends, who said he had a temper.