In the early hours of New Year’s Day 2021 in Canton, Georgia, Morgan Metzer was awakened to a terrifying sight. A man wearing a mask and all black clothing was standing at her bedroom doorway. The man ran and jumped on top of her. “That’s when he started pistol-whipping me,” Morgan said. The assailant used zip ties to constrain her wrists before strangling her nearly unconscious twice.

“‘You’re gonna regret this, you’ve done really wrong now,'” Morgan recalled the man told her in a deep and gravelly voice that he seemed to be trying to disguise. She said it sounded like Batman. Morgan Metzer’s harrowing attack is the focus of this week’s all-new “48 Hours” reported by contributor Nikki Battiste.  “The ‘Batman’ Intruder” airs Saturday, Dec. 14 at 10/9c on CBS and Paramount+.

Afterward, the attacker placed a pillowcase over her head and picked Morgan up and left her on the back porch, which was connected to the bedroom. He told her not to move until she heard two car honks or he’d kill her. Then all went quiet except the sound of the stream near her secluded home.

Forty minutes passed, but then terror struck again. Morgan heard someone walking towards her and up the porch steps. Initially terrified her attacker had returned, she was surprised to hear a familiar voice.

“‘Oh honey, what happened?'” Morgan remembered her ex-husband, Rod Metzer, said when he found her.

Rod called 911 and law enforcement showed up to the scene. Rod’s rescue of his ex-wife appeared to be an act of heroism.

Rod said he had been looking out for Morgan despite their divorce, which came after a nearly 20-year history together. They started dating when Morgan was 14 and Rod was 17 before marrying in their early 20s. The couple had twins, who were spending a few days with Morgan’s sister in Florida when the attack occurred.

Morgan said her decision to file for divorce came after years of what she described as mental and physical abuse from Rod. Rod moved out of Morgan’s home into his own apartment and Morgan was ready to move on. Their divorce was finalized just weeks before the attack.

However, this new start for Morgan was cut short. Earlier in the week, Morgan said Rod called her with shocking news that he had pancreatic cancer.

“And so I rushed to go see him,” Morgan told Battiste. “He showed me doctors’ notes and whatnot.” She allowed Rod to stay at her home to help him cope with his diagnosis. “I needed to be supportive still because it’s the father of my children.” 

During this time, Morgan said Rod was constantly trying to get back together with her. But she had no interest and on the morning of New Year’s Eve, she told Rod he needed to share his health news with his parents.

“He said, ‘No, absolutely not. I’m not telling anybody.’ And that’s when I was like, ‘OK, get out,'” Morgan recalled. Morgan said Rod left, but still spent the day texting her about reconciling. Fed up, Morgan lied and told Rod she was going to sleep at her parents’ home that New Year’s Eve night.

How Rod knew Morgan was at her home, along with the coincidental timing of his arrival after her attack, raised questions with investigators who spoke to Rod at the scene. Rod said he was planning on spending the night at his apartment. However, he told them he heard someone knock on his ground floor apartment window and say Morgan’s name. After Rod tried calling Morgan with no answer, he decided to drive to her house to check on her. He told investigators that going to her house instead of her parents’ was just out of habit.

After interviewing both Morgan and Rod at the scene, investigators became suspicious of Rod’s story. They ordered search warrants on Rod’s apartment, car and electronic devices, uncovering his internet search history. The searches included, “How to get sympathy from your ex” and “How to change the sound of your voice.” One search also stood out to investigators: “cancer letter from hospital.”

Investigators also discovered a fake email account created by Rod, posing as a doctor, to send the cancer diagnosis letter that he showed Morgan. But there was even more.

“He had created a bill for a doctor’s office to show that he was being treated for pancreatic cancer,” said Rachel Ashe, the deputy chief assistant district attorney for Cherokee County. She said Rod “did all of this in order to convince Morgan that he had pancreatic cancer.” He never did.

Rod Metzer eventually pleaded guilty to 14 counts relating to the attack on Morgan Metzer. He was sentenced to 70 years – 25 in prison followed by an additional 45 years of probation. 

Six critically endangered Mekong giant catfish — one of the largest and rarest freshwater fish in the world — were caught and released recently in Cambodia, reviving hopes for the survival of the species.

The underwater giants can grow up to 10 feet long and weigh up to 660 pounds, or as heavy as a grand piano. They now are only found in Southeast Asia’s Mekong River but in the past inhabited the length of the 3,044 mile-long river, all the way from its outlet in Vietnam to its northern reaches in China’s Yunnan province.

The species’ population has plummeted by 80% in recent decades due to rising pressures from overfishing, dams that block the migratory path the fish follow to spawn and other disruptions.  According to the World Wildlife Fund, some experts believe there may only be a few hundred Mekong giant catfish surviving.

Few of the millions of people who depend on the Mekong for their livelihoods have ever seen a giant catfish. To find six of the giants, which were caught and released within 5 days, is unprecedented.

The first two were on the Tonle Sap river, a tributary of the Mekong not far from Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. They were given identification tags and released. On Tuesday, fishermen caught four more giant catfish including two longer than 6.5 feet that weighed 264 pounds and 288 pounds, respectively. The captured fish were apparently migrating from their floodplain habitats near Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake northward along the Mekong River, likely to spawning grounds in northern Cambodia, Laos or Thailand.

“It’s a hopeful sign that the species is not in imminent, like in the next few years, risk of extinction, which gives conservation activities time to be implemented and to continue to bend the curve away from decline and toward recovery,” said Dr. Zeb Hogan, a University of Nevada Reno research biologist who leads the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Wonders of the Mekong project.

Much is still unknown about the giant fish, but over the past two decades a joint conservation program by the Wonders of the Mekong and the Cambodian Fisheries Administration has caught, tagged and released around 100 of them, gaining insights into how the catfish migrate, where they live and the health of the species.

“This information is used to establish migration corridors and protect habitats to try to help these fish survive in the future,” said Hogan.

The Mekong giant catfish is woven into the region’s cultural fabric, depicted in 3,000-year-old cave paintings, revered in folklore and considered a symbol of the river, whose fisheries feed millions and are valued at $10 billion annually.

Local communities play a crucial role in conservation. Fishermen now know about the importance of reporting accidental catches of rare and endangered species to officials, enabling researchers to reach places where fish have been captured and measure and tag them before releasing them.

“Their cooperation is essential for our research and conservation efforts,” Heng Kong, director of Cambodia’s Inland Fisheries Research and Development Institute, said in a statement.

Apart from the Mekong giant catfish, the river is also home to other large fish including the salmon carp, which was thought to be extinct until it was spotted earlier this year, and the giant sting ray.

That four of these fish were caught and tagged in a single day is likely the “big fish story of the century for the Mekong”, said Brian Eyler, director of the Washington-based Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia Program. He said that seeing them confirms that the annual fish migration was still robust despite all the pressures facing the environment along the Mekong.

“Hopefully what happened this week will show the Mekong countries and the world that the Mekong’s mighty fish population is uniquely special and needs to be conserved,” he said.

Threats to endangered aquatic species

Besides overfishing and plastic pollution, the Mekong River Basin has been degraded by upstream dams and climate change, which have had a major impact on water levels in the critically endangered catfish’s aquatic home.

According to WWF, threats to the Mekong giant catfish include infrastructure development such as dams that block migration routes.

“Without the ability to move up and down rivers, the fish have fewer opportunities to breed,” WWF says.

Cambodia has placed tough restrictions on fishing in the vast river to try and reduce the number of endangered aquatic species killed in nets.

Numbers of Irrawaddy dolphins — which once swam through much of the mighty Mekong — have dwindled despite efforts to preserve them.

In 2022, Cambodian fishermen got a shock when they inadvertently hooked an endangered giant freshwater stingray four metres (13 feet) long and weighing 180 kilos.

Over the past 25 years, the CFA and researchers tagged and released around 100 giant catfish as part of a conservation program that encourages fishermen to report catches of rare species.

Conservationists said the recent giant catfish catches mark “a new era of conservation” and “new hope for the survival of a species that has become increasingly rare in much of its native habitat”.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.