Newlywed Jordan Linn Graham accused of pushing husband off cliff a week after their wedding

Montana's Glacier National Park (Flickr (B.D.'s world))

An American woman has been charged with murdering her husband by pushing him off a cliff just a week after they got married.

Jordan Linn Graham, 22, appeared in court in Montana on Monday, accused of the second-degree murder of her husband Cody Lee Johnson, while they hiking in Glacier National Park in July. If convicted, she faces life in prison.

Court documents suggest that Graham told a friend she had been having second thoughts about the marriage – at around the same time he went missing. His mangled body was found five days later below The Loop, a well-known outlook in the park.

When first questioned, Graham is said to have told police that her husband, who was 25, had disappeared after going driving with an unidentified friend a few days before his employer reported him missing. However according to police, she subsequently admitted that his disappearance was really as a result of a clifftop row which turned fatal.

‘Graham stated their argument intensified. At one point in time during their arguing, Graham turned and began to walk away. She stated Johnson grabbed her by the arm’, according to a police statement.

After removing Johnson's hand from her arm, Graham confessed that she was so angry that ‘she pushed Johnson with both hands in the back and as a result, he fell face first off the cliff’, it added.

The friend, who is identified only by the initials KM, is said to have told the FBI that she received a text message from Graham saying 'Oh well, I'm going to talk to him.'

She responded, 'I'll pray for you guys.'

Graham replied, 'But dead serious if u don't hear from me at all again tonight, something happened.'

One of the groomsmen at Johnson’s wedding told the Missoulian newspaper that he had warned his friend not to marry Graham.

“Their interaction with each other, it didn’t seem like a happy, loving relationship that you would normally see. It was just very awkward, I guess,” said Cameron Fredrickson, who had known Johnson since 2006.

In fact, he claimed, Graham did not even look at her husband-to-be while they recited their vows at the ceremony.

As of Tuesday evening, Graham remained in the Missoula County jail.