00:00:09
May 5th is the day that's going to stick with the men and women of this police department their entire careers.
00:00:16
A monster. I mean, monster comes to mind. Somebody with no no soul. This was a promising family, a great
00:00:25
family. I got the phone call from my neighbor Christopher Coleman probably around 10
00:00:30
to 7:00 in the morning. Told me that he was on his way home from the gym. He was crossing the JB Bridge.
00:00:39
He said, "I'm I'm calling Sherry. You know, nobody's answered the phone. She should be up." Tell him, "Hey, okay. You
00:00:43
know, I'll go over and check. I'll go get somebody over there." I'm He was concerned from the threats that
00:00:47
they've been [music] receiving that he reported to us. My name's Justin Barlow. I was a
00:00:52
detective sergeant for the Columbia, Illinois Police Department. I also happen to be a neighbor.
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I went to the front door just looking in. I couldn't see anything. After that, I went from the front of the
00:01:04
house to the basement area. Uh this is the basement of the home where we found an open window.
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Came in through through the hallway here, up the steps. And the steps basically led into the
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kitchen. The first thing that I remember was smell of spray paint. We turned to the left here and saw the
00:01:26
message that was left. A lot of uh helter-skelter type of message. [music] Manson-style
00:01:33
spray paintings on the wall. Uh saying punished. It started with uh email threats.
00:01:45
Moved to written threats. Police were involved. >> When I read the letter, it was very
00:01:54
specific [music] about killing the family. I will kill your wife and children in their sleep.
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Then we started going to the up the staircase to the uh bedroom, the second floor of the house. And then as you're
00:02:08
walking up the steps, this message here, "You have paid." This is leading to what you're going to find
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upstairs. It wasn't going to have a good outcome. And at the top of the stairs, we found
00:02:22
the three bedrooms. To the left of the staircase was the master bedroom where we found Sherry Coleman.
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To the right was a bedroom of Garrett where he was found in his bed. And Gavin. We found him in the the third bedroom.
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All three deceased. It was a homicide scene. We have an active death investigation.
00:02:48
Who's responsible, why it happened, when it happened. >> If you don't believe in evil,
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I hope you do now. A mother and her two sons had been strangled in their sleep. This touched [music] an entire
00:03:04
community. They took it very personal. And that's something that you'll [music] never
00:03:11
forget as a reporter. We're following leads. We have leads in this case. We thought with the prior threats that
00:03:19
was going to be a very good lead for us who had such hatred [music] for for Chris Coleman.
00:03:24
That's where our investigation was going to start. This is Columbia. >> [music] >> Innocent women and children don't get
00:03:30
murdered in their bed at night. I'm Maureen Maher. Tonight on 48 Hours, the writing on the wall.
00:04:10
On the morning of May 5th, 2009, Christopher Coleman returned home from the gym >> [music]
00:04:18
>> to a scene of chaos and unimaginable horror. Told him, "Hey, they they didn't make
00:04:23
it." Being the family. And I walked him outside to the garage. He sat down on the driveway and started
00:04:31
sobbing. Said he felt like he was going to throw up. And then kind of curled up in the fetal position.
00:04:39
Detective Justin Barlow of the Columbia Police Department had been the Coleman's
00:04:43
neighbor for 5 years and was the first to respond when Chris could not reach his wife.
00:04:49
>> [music] >> This crime scene it wasn't bloody, but that didn't mean it was less gruesome.
00:04:56
Were you at all prepared for what you were about to walk into? I don't think anybody could be prepared for that.
00:05:04
Upstairs, [music] where they should have been safe in their beds, were 31-year-old Sherry and the couple's two
00:05:11
young boys, 11-year-old Garrett [music] and 9-year-old Gavin. What is the lasting image you have in
00:05:18
your mind from that day? I would say the one that sticks out the most would probably be be Garrett just because he's
00:05:24
the one that that, you know, I I discovered. Is that a haunting image for you even as
00:05:31
a police officer? Yeah. A little bit. The killer had not only taken Garrett's life, but had desecrated the body by
00:05:42
leaving another disturbing message. The spray paint in his room was actually on the sheet that was over his body. It was
00:05:50
and there was some remnants of the spray paint on him as well. We knew that that this case was going to be probably
00:06:00
the biggest one of of our lives. Columbia, Illinois is a small, quiet suburb outside of St. Louis. A wonderful
00:06:11
place to to live and raise a family. And Chief Joe Edwards immediately recognized
00:06:16
that his two investigators were going [music] to need some help. So we called in a special unit. We're doing all we
00:06:23
can to find out what happened in this house. Major Jeff Connor and the Major [music] Case Squad, which brought in an
00:06:30
army of 25 seasoned cops. It's typically your smaller departments that need the resource, need the help.
00:06:41
Hours after the murders, the Major Case Squad swung into high gear. The CSI team started processing [music]
00:06:48
the house. Warrants were secured to go through the Coleman's phones and computers while a very distraught Chris
00:06:54
was taken to the police station to give his statement. [music] Want to do everything we can for this
00:07:04
man. Coleman told investigators that it had been a normal morning. What time did you
00:07:11
leave your house to go to the gym this morning? He got up and left for the gym around
00:07:16
5:40 a.m. and called Sherry numerous times to wake her up. Then you called her again at 6:35 a.m.,
00:07:25
6:43, 6:52 a.m. The bodies of Sherry Coleman and her sons Garrett As neighbors woke to the
00:07:32
news of the murders, and old were discovered shortly before 7:00 Tuesday morning.
00:07:36
>> They were both devastated and terrified. So as I got down the street, I had seen
00:07:42
that it was at the Coleman house. And I text her right away and said, "Is everything okay?"
00:07:48
And I didn't get a response. Vanessa Rigorex, [music] who lived down the street, said the
00:07:57
Colemans appeared to have a perfect life raising [music] their two beautiful sons.
00:08:03
I always thought of them as the American family. The perfect family. >> [music] >> Everybody would want their children like
00:08:14
these two boys, polite, always helpful. They had a heart of gold. The couple had
00:08:22
been married [music] for 12 years and met when they were both in the military training at the canine unit. Sherry
00:08:28
became [music] a stay-at-home mom. 32-year-old Chris, the son of a preacher, used his Marine and security
00:08:36
experience [music] to land a job for a well-known televangelist, Joyce Meyer. And the devil fills our minds with junk.
00:08:45
Joyce Meyer is now known throughout the country and known throughout the world as a leading voice in the evangelical
00:08:52
movement. >> Jesus died to set us free. >> [music] >> And pretty successful organization
00:08:59
financially? She's extremely successful financially. I've seen figures from [music] 50 to 100 million dollars a
00:09:05
year. Reporter Nick Pistor followed the case for 2 years and is a CBS [music] News
00:09:13
consultant. Don't ever let the devil steal from you. Joyce Meyer travels all throughout the
00:09:18
world, does conferences in countries that don't necessarily respond well to women who are preaching uh a Christian
00:09:26
message. And so she wanted some deeper security. >> [music] >> But being Joyce Meyer's head of security
00:09:34
apparently put a target on Chris [music] Coleman's back. In November 2008, Chris had begun
00:09:41
receiving death threats to his work email. Whenever Chris Coleman reported the first death threat, he came to us at
00:09:48
the police department. "Tell [music] Joyce to stop preaching the bull." It read. "If I can't get to Joyce, then I
00:09:54
will get to someone close to her." We give the Coleman family an extra patrol, which we just give it special
00:10:01
attention to make sure nobody's there. It was in January 2009 that a hand-delivered threat showed up in the
00:10:08
mailbox at the [music] Coleman family home. It read, "Deny your God publicly or else. No more opportunities. Time is
00:10:17
running out for you and your family." Did it concern you as a neighbor living so closely when you heard that
00:10:25
there were death threats being made to the guy who lived across the street? >> Absolutely. Each note seemed to escalate
00:10:31
the seriousness of the situation, and on April 27th, less than a week before the
00:10:36
murders, a final missive arrived with an ultimatum. [music] "Stop today or else. I know your
00:10:42
schedule. You can't hide from me forever. I'm always watching. I know when you're leaving in the morning, and
00:10:48
I know when you stay at home." You decided to ramp things up yourself to be proactive, and what did you do at your
00:10:54
house? We got one camera mounted up in my 5-year-old's bedroom and pointed it right at the the mailbox.
00:11:01
With the camera aimed directly at the Colemans' mailbox, the Coleman residence was located about 214 ft approximately.
00:11:09
They hoped to get a clear shot of whoever was leaving the notes. Be prepared for something [music] that was
00:11:14
going to happen and be as proactive about it as we could. Instead, days later, the killer somehow
00:11:21
[music] snuck into the Coleman home and strangled Sheri, Garrett, >> [music] >> and Gavin.
00:11:31
But if the murders were linked to the threats [music] and Joyce Meyer Ministries, that meant
00:11:37
the cops might now be on a global search for suspects. There was a lot of fear that there was somebody out there
00:11:43
killing families, >> [music] >> and who was going to be next. My prayer over this town is that there'd
00:12:03
be healing that would come. There'd be a heart for mercy that would come towards whoever that poor soul is
00:12:10
that went to this extreme, and that Columbia could begin to heal again. This touched [music] an entire
00:12:31
community. The neighbors were shocked. They saw the young boys playing touch football with their father on the front
00:12:41
lawn. >> [music] >> These were little boys that they knew. You could just see the pain on
00:12:48
everyone's face. It devastated [music] the community. The small town of Columbia, Illinois was
00:12:55
reeling with the sudden loss of Sheri, Garrett, and Gavin Coleman. Close friends [music] like Kathy LaPlant were
00:13:02
crushed. Sheri was a loving mother, loyal friend, and sister to me. My life's not the same. Put a hole in my
00:13:12
heart. If I would have known for 1 ms she was in danger, I would have been down there.
00:13:18
For Sheri's brother, Mario, and their mother, Angela, it was impossible to accept the reality of the brutal crime.
00:13:26
She grew up to be a beautiful person on the outside as well as the inside. They were her world. Those boys.
00:13:36
They were her world. You know, Garrett was more um quiet and more [music] of a thinker. He's all you
00:13:41
could tell by what looking at his in his eyes. He's only thinking. Mhm. And uh And Gavin was
00:13:47
>> Gavin was very He was He's outgoing. Outgoing. He was a very He's like a social butterfly.
00:13:52
His personality [music] was just like his mom's, just like his mother's. With Sheri,
00:13:57
Garrett, and Gavin, I mean, I think that just that that's what the motivation [music] was for everybody.
00:14:02
Hours into the investigation, the Major Case [music] Squad continued to pursue their best lead, finding whoever wrote
00:14:10
those threats. [music] We tracked down uh people across the country who didn't like Joyce Myers, and we interviewed
00:14:16
them to find out where they were at >> [music] >> on May the 4th and May the 5th. And that
00:14:20
morning, they were hoping Chris might be able to point them in the right direction.
00:14:26
Who do you suspect? I mean, out of all these emails and things you've been talking about at work, there's got to be
00:14:30
one person that stands out in your mind. I don't have any clue. I wish I knew. >> [snorts]
00:14:36
>> If I had just been there this morning. But as police [music] continued to talk
00:14:41
to Coleman, they were surprised by how he was acting. How do you think they died?
00:14:49
No idea. You guys haven't told me. Okay. Do you have any clues? Did he ever ask how his wife and children died?
00:15:02
He never asked. >> No. What else sticks out in your mind from those first few hours?
00:15:07
>> Just the lack of reaction. I mean, just the lack of curiosity of what's going
00:15:12
on. So, police kept probing. Was there a problem in your relationship? Was there
00:15:17
anything currently um that wasn't going so well in your relationship? Not really. Really? I mean, just the
00:15:26
communication thing. Had had you seen anyone else um outside of your wife? In a romantic way?
00:15:36
Um No. Chris was adamant that he was not having a relationship outside of his marriage. So, it seemed odd when he
00:15:45
offered a stunning piece of information about another woman. Tara in Florida that you guys were going to talk to.
00:15:53
Um and I've talked to her um lately, but And what's what's with that? I mean, what Just a friend, someone you talk to.
00:16:01
Tara is Tara Lynn. A cocktail waitress and an old high school friend of Sheri's.
00:16:09
Okay, you said you had a good close friendship. But were were you actually um doing anything that that you felt
00:16:20
wouldn't be approved by your wife? Um some of the conversations. Probably. Coleman insisted they were just friends,
00:16:29
that he met Tara through Sheri when their family went to Florida on vacation. Did you guys potentially look
00:16:35
for that? No, I didn't want to do that to my kids. But during the interview, the Major Case
00:16:48
Squad contacted police in Tara's hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida to check out Chris's story.
00:16:55
Channel clear? Detective Shannon Holstead got the call. We went from the station um to go make
00:17:01
contact with her thinking it was going to be a quick 20-minute interview, um and it ended up being very different.
00:17:07
That's because the information Holstead [music] gained from Tara about the relationship was very different than
00:17:13
what Chris was telling police in Illinois. She provided the BlackBerry and the laptop computer obviously had
00:17:20
files um of videos and emails relating to the relationship. Did you immediately step out and call St. Louis? I did. And
00:17:29
what did you say to them? I said, "I'm not positive, but I think this is his girlfriend."
00:17:34
Armed with that information, Detective Barlow confronted Chris. Um the one thing that I did want to tell you right
00:17:40
now is the St. Petersburg Homicide Unit is talking to Tara right now, and she's showing us the pictures that you sent
00:17:48
her with you two. We know you guys have been having an affair. >> [music] >> So, was that a pretty big break for you
00:17:55
guys? It It was a >> [music] >> important piece. Investigators learned the couple had begun seeing each other
00:18:02
in the fall of 2008, 6 months before the murders. During the affair, Chris would fly Tara to meet him
00:18:12
at locations where he was working for Joyce Meyer. Are you with me so far? I know you guys went to Hawaii together.
00:18:20
We pulled the Enterprise Leasing cars where she where you guys went to different trips together, right? It was
00:18:25
an affair. And it didn't You didn't think it was an affair? Because she's It was when you're like living with him and
00:18:30
you're going to get married and everything. She had on her calendar um a scheduled
00:18:35
wedding to Chris Coleman, scheduled vacations, different accounts, credit card accounts that they held together,
00:18:42
um and I think she honest to God believed that he was going to leave his wife and two children.
00:18:49
Chris's parents, Pastor Ron Coleman and his wife, Connie, were stunned to learn their son [music] had had an affair. But
00:18:56
they insisted it had nothing to do with the murders. He's always been a real gentle person. Um
00:19:03
Kind of quiet. Is there any way that there's a part of Chris that you don't know that could have been capable of
00:19:09
this? Not in my view. You couldn't put something around your kids' throat unless you're a monster. It's not there.
00:19:16
It's just not there. While investigators believed Chris's affair with Tara Lynn was a strong
00:19:22
motive for murder, there still wasn't enough evidence to charge him. So, after 6 long hours, Chris Coleman walked out a
00:19:32
free man. It wasn't like we were wanting to believe that Chris is the one who did
00:19:37
this. It's just that the evidence kept pointing to him. The memorial in their subdivision
00:19:52
>> [music] >> is awesome. There's a bench and there's trees. Every day [music] friends and neighbors
00:19:58
are reminded of the beautiful lives that were stolen from them. The community got together and created
00:20:04
that. So, they wanted to do something positive. >> [music] >> Megan Turnbow says it's a fitting
00:20:10
tribute unlike the funeral service at Pastor Coleman's church. No friends, no family, no coaches,
00:20:18
nobody spoke about these three awesome people that were dead. In the days that followed the service,
00:20:26
any sympathy for Chris Coleman was stripped away as news spread about his affair with Sherry's high school friend
00:20:33
Tara Lens. Well, when the affair came out [music] and I had no idea and I heard about it
00:20:41
from someone else, I felt like every day I was just getting stabbed in the heart
00:20:48
by these little pieces of information. Did you think he was going to be arrested? Yes.
00:20:53
And I couldn't wait. I was nervous to be honest with you. I didn't even think about that.
00:20:57
>> The major case squad felt that pressure. Obviously, in any case, you you want to you want to
00:21:04
get the person responsible for it, but you want to get the right person. But right away, there were red flags.
00:21:11
Police were concerned when they found a basement window open and others unlocked. Here's a guy whose family is
00:21:18
being threatened. They're going to destroy his family while he's gone. But yet, that window was left unlocked
00:21:24
and it was obvious it was left unlocked cuz there was no forced entry. And remember that camera Detective
00:21:31
Barlow installed in his house? You saw no strangers walking up and down the street. You saw no strange vehicles. And
00:21:38
Chris had even installed his own surveillance cameras [music] in his house. What about the surveillance
00:21:44
equipment that was allegedly in the house? The recorder was missing. That's convenient. Yes.
00:21:52
An autopsy on Sherry revealed that she fought violently with her killer leaving her with two black eyes.
00:22:00
Sherry was involved in an altercation before she was murdered. Um those two boys weren't.
00:22:06
Which made scratches found on Chris Coleman's arms all the more suspicious. When did you first notice
00:22:14
the scratches on his arms? It was brought to my attention by people at the scene. How you doing? I mean,
00:22:20
is there anything I can get you? You're freezing. Yeah. Okay. Police say Coleman
00:22:24
tried to hide them during his interview. You can see on the video where he's asking for a blanket because he says
00:22:30
he's cold. The only part of his body he covers up are the, you know, suspected um marks on his arm. That'll work on it.
00:22:38
Yeah, as long as you can roll my arms up. Okay. I remember in the interview room it
00:22:43
being very warm in that. Did you think he was in shock? No. Chris later claimed he got those
00:22:50
scratches the day before when he was removing a satellite dish from his roof. Was there any DNA found at the scene
00:22:58
that would implicate him? Uh I'll I'll just say there wasn't any DNA found that didn't belong there. Uh
00:23:04
no bogeyman, no unidentified DNA, anything like that. There was incriminating evidence found
00:23:11
on Chris's phone and computers starting with X-rated snapshots and videos that Tara and Chris had sent each other. It
00:23:18
was a serious affair. Uh he had written down every her measurements, her favorite things, uh everything about her
00:23:26
he had stored so he could, you know, buy her things or do whatever for her. By November 5th of 2008, Chris had written
00:23:34
on his computer that that was the day Tara changed his life. For police, that date would set off
00:23:41
alarm bells. And how many days after that then did the threats start to show up?
00:23:47
>> About 9 days after that. 9 days. The Colemans insist it is all a coincidence. It's my understanding that
00:23:56
he had written down November 5th, the day Tara changed my life, that they had exchanged promise rings and that he had
00:24:04
even written down the name of their first child were to be a little girl. Is is that true? Honestly?
00:24:11
I cannot imagine him doing that. >> That's not Chris. >> With anybody. He just didn't really
00:24:16
operate in that in that arena of emotions. He just didn't. He was just very common logical sense.
00:24:24
Chris's parents believe their son is innocent and [music] that it was an intruder who killed his family and left
00:24:30
hateful messages. In fact, Chris even voluntarily provided samples of his own handwriting to
00:24:36
police. What was the most important piece of evidence at the crime scene? At the crime scene, probably the
00:24:43
handwriting on the walls. But those samples would later come back to haunt him. The crime scene lab come
00:24:51
back and saying that the handwriting found on the wall matches up to the handwriting exemplar
00:24:57
that Christopher Coleman gave at the Columbia Police Department. Finally, 2 weeks after the murders,
00:25:04
police felt they had enough to make their case. >> [crying] >> And Christopher Coleman was charged with
00:25:12
the first-degree murder of his wife and two sons. If it was another time, they would have
00:25:18
had pitchforks and lanterns in their hand. They were out for vengeance. They wanted
00:25:24
this case solved and they wanted it solved immediately and they wanted him to be found guilty immediately.
00:25:32
>> [screaming] >> Were you there when he was arrested? Yes. It was at night, the worst scenario.
00:25:39
We've lost three. We've lost Garrett and Gavin and Sherry and now Chris is gone.
00:25:46
Sherry's friends and neighbors were relieved but angry at the toll it had taken on them and their children. I've
00:25:53
talked to some of the moms and the children in the community wonder if their dad could do the same thing.
00:26:03
And investigators insist all this pain was caused by Chris Coleman's obsession. And all because of a woman. I believe
00:26:13
that had a major part of it. This crime was about greed, sex, selfishness, and [snorts] narcissism.
00:26:33
Chris Coleman decided he wanted a new life and his family was in the way. He was obviously a monster who carried
00:26:41
out a very sadistic plan. By the time Chris Coleman went on trial in April 2011,
00:26:49
prosecutor Ed Parkinson and his team had spent 2 years building their case. This
00:26:55
was a a huge case. This was like a 10,000 piece puzzle. The murders of Sherry Coleman and her two young boys He
00:27:03
and his expected three >> for local media as well. Chris Coleman murder trial All the
00:27:11
pre-trial publicity prompted the judge to bus in a jury from a county an hour and a half away. What was the biggest
00:27:18
challenge for you as a prosecutor in this case? People who turn out to be jurors have to accept the fact that
00:27:25
parents kill their kids. It's just hard to accept it. He just looked like a good
00:27:30
guy. How do you get that much hatred for a child? As unthinkable as it was, at every corner investigators had turned up
00:27:39
more evidence against Coleman. Some of it came from Sherry's own friends who were determined to have
00:27:46
their day in court. What was it like waiting for the 2 years for the trial? It was life-changing and not for the
00:27:55
better. How did you feel about testifying? I was scared to death. I was like, I'm going to do this for Sherry.
00:28:04
Coleman, sporting a new hairdo and a bulletproof vest at his trial, would hear those friends bolster the
00:28:11
prosecution's claim that he had lied about his marriage in his interrogation. talked about it a while back about
00:28:19
possibly maybe a split up or something if we start meeting with Actually, one of the pastors
00:28:25
from Joyce Meyer. Yeah, things have been going awesome. Coleman insisted that he and his wife
00:28:31
had merely hit a few bumps in the road and were helped by counseling. Sherry told her friends a different
00:28:38
story. She was in my room and she was crying and Chris wanted to leave her and then
00:28:44
he would start to say hurtful things like I never loved you. But Sherry wasn't willing to let him go.
00:28:52
And he would put on a face in front of the marriage counselor and Sherry said when he got back home, he'd yell at her
00:28:57
and, you know, it would just be hell to pay. Prosecutor Parkinson says there's a
00:29:02
reason Coleman wanted Sherry to be the one to divorce him. I believe he became so enraptured by Tara Lens, but he
00:29:11
couldn't get divorced in his own mind because then he'd lose his $100,000 job a year with Joyce Meyer Ministries. They
00:29:18
frown on divorce if it's your fault. Parkinson believes Coleman was hoping to make a clean break before anyone caught
00:29:26
on about the affair. In a videotape deposition, Joyce Meyer confirmed her ministry's zero tolerance
00:29:33
of adultery. If he would have been having an adulterous affair while he was still married,
00:29:41
then it could have definitely affected his job. But eventually, Sherry did find out her
00:29:47
husband was having an affair with her best friend from high school. Sherri opened up her computer one night with a
00:29:54
friend and said, "Do you want to see the woman who's having an affair with my husband?"
00:30:00
and showed images of Tara Lentz. But Sherri still refused to get divorced and something she said to her friend
00:30:08
Kathy LaPlant will haunt her forever. When he came home demanding a divorce, she told me that if anything [music]
00:30:16
happened to her, Chris did it. Several months later, Sherri and the boys were dead.
00:30:24
What do you think the trigger was that made it May 5th? I think Tara uh was pressing him. I think he just got
00:30:31
pushed into his own corner. They had wedding dates planned. Um Chris had told Tara that
00:30:39
he was serving Sherri with divorce papers on May the 5th, the day of the homicides. And had he ever filed divorce
00:30:44
divorce papers? >> No. No. Did he ever speak to an attorney? No. After hearing all about this other
00:30:50
woman, the jury would finally get to meet her. It was the most anticipated moment of the trial.
00:30:59
Tara Lentz [music] making her entrance under police escort. She arrived at the courthouse almost
00:31:05
like a Hollywood star arriving somewhere. It was a packed courtroom gallery. Tara testified that she and Coleman
00:31:12
talked or texted, quote, "all the time, constantly" and that they often professed their love for each other.
00:31:19
>> [music] >> When asked whether she and Coleman had plans to marry, her short answer spoke
00:31:24
volumes, quote, "the divorce had to happen first." Do you think that Tara had anything to do with the murders? No,
00:31:32
I don't. And you don't think she had any idea that something was about to happen?
00:31:37
No, not from any of the evidence, I don't believe that. But the prosecutor does believe
00:31:42
Coleman's lust for Tara had everything to do with it and to drive [music] his point home, he showed the court the
00:31:49
sexually explicit videos and photos the two sent to each other. We said, "Lord, please help us. We don't have to look at
00:31:57
this, but please help us sit here for his sake that he doesn't feel that we're ashamed of him." Now, instead of
00:32:03
embarking on an exciting new life and keeping his six-figure income, Chris Coleman was facing the death
00:32:12
penalty. Did you kill your wife and your children? No, absolutely not. Chris Coleman had a prominent local
00:32:34
defense team at his side when he went on trial for his life. Another double-edged
00:32:38
sword in trying to use the fingerprint on But John O'Gara and Bill Margolis had to admit they faced an uphill battle.
00:32:46
The evidence was although all circumstantial, it was very overwhelming. And at trial, one of the most critical
00:32:55
pieces of evidence would be time of death. The prosecution maintains the three victims were killed hours before Coleman
00:33:05
left the house to go to the gym. The bodies were stiff. They had rigor mortis that uh everything pointed that they
00:33:13
were dead by at least 3:00 in the morning. It could have been the whole case, quite frankly.
00:33:20
The defense insists that Sherri, Garrett and Gavin could have been killed that morning during the hour and 10 minutes
00:33:27
that Coleman was gone. You know, you can use various formulas. You know, the time of death is not an
00:33:32
exact science. As investigators kept building their case, something was troubling them about that
00:33:41
trail of threatening letters and emails. [music] It read, "If I can't get to Joyce, then
00:33:46
I will get to someone close to her." We didn't find anybody else who had received
00:33:51
messages that were threatening to their family. The prosecution's computer experts discovered there was a good
00:33:58
reason for that. Those threats were typed on his laptop. The email threats that came to him
00:34:05
>> Yeah. originated from his own laptop. >> laptop. Those threats were sent from an
00:34:09
account [music] called [email protected]. Defense attorney Bill Margolis insists
00:34:16
someone else could have sent them. Anybody that had access to his computer, whether it was a co-worker or anybody
00:34:23
else, could have created that account. Investigators still had no so-called smoking gun.
00:34:31
No DNA, no murder weapon and no eyewitness. But after [music] analyzing the blood
00:34:39
red paint in those frightening messages on the walls, they believe they just might have something close to it. One
00:34:46
can of that exact spray paint was purchased at a at a local hardware store and the computerized signature said
00:34:53
Christopher Coleman. You cannot paint that much without paint being somewhere on you. They literally
00:35:01
cut him to the quick. He pulled his own hair out for them. There was not a trace of paint.
00:35:08
But if Coleman was the killer, he'd made this scene on the surveillance video recorded [music]
00:35:13
the afternoon before the bodies were discovered all the more chilling. >> [music]
00:35:19
>> It's a perfect suburban scene. He played catch with his son at the house and then [music] the next morning
00:35:28
they're dead. It's unexplainable. Chris Coleman did not take the [music] stand. I didn't want to believe that he could
00:35:42
do that. I cried myself to sleep. In a case that was gut-wrenching [music] for everyone involved, it turns out the
00:35:51
jury was no exception. Absolutely unimaginable. I mean, there's just so much hate.
00:35:57
It's just hatred spread everywhere. The first vote inside that jury room was seven to five, not guilty. But not
00:36:09
because they believed Coleman was innocent. We all thought [music] he did it. Who Who else would have done it? But
00:36:15
many of the jurors were troubled by the circumstantial nature of the case. [music] You wanted factual, tangible
00:36:23
evidence that said [music] he did it. Make him prove it. As the deliberations entered a second
00:36:32
day, crowds began to gather outside the courthouse, the tension mounting. But Sherri's mother remained optimistic.
00:36:42
We will get justice for my daughter and for my grandsons. I have what they call the mother
00:36:48
instinct. I'm very confident. >> you. Incredibly, it was the jurors' own detective work that they say pushed them
00:36:56
over the top. When they looked at the back of this picture of Chris Coleman and Tara Lentz
00:37:02
kissing, they noticed it was taken [music] on October 21st, 2008. I think actually what I said was, "Oh my
00:37:10
god." And I said, "What was the date that he said the affair started?" Yeah, the dates didn't
00:37:19
>> until Novem- November. >> November. And the picture was created in October. Way before they said they had been
00:37:27
seeing each other. And what did that say to you? That was something black and white in
00:37:31
front of my face that said, "If he could lie about this, he's lying about everything."
00:37:40
After 15 hours of deliberations, there is a verdict. in the Chris Coleman triple murder trial. The verdict
00:37:48
was guilty. Chris Coleman in this case, guilty on all three of these counts. And the crowd
00:37:55
outside the courthouse erupted in applause and cheers. >> [cheering] >> I had never seen anything like what
00:38:08
happened on the lawn of the courthouse that night. The verdict was handed down on May 5th,
00:38:14
2011. Two years to the day that Sherri, Garrett [music] and Gavin were found murdered.
00:38:23
I walked out of the courtroom and first words out of my mouth, "Yes, we did it. [music] We got justice."
00:38:28
The judge sentenced Coleman to life in prison in part because the state of Illinois' repeal of the death [music]
00:38:35
penalty was just months away from taking effect. Did you kill your wife and your
00:38:39
children? No, absolutely not. We spoke to Chris Coleman by phone because our cameras were not allowed inside the
00:38:48
prison. I absolutely love my wife and my kids and this, you know, is not is not me.
00:38:53
How do you love your wife and be having an affair with one of her best friends? Maybe I wasn't, you know, selfishly
00:39:00
getting what I thought I might should be getting at home as far as with my wife, you know, from the
00:39:06
uh physical side of things, but I still absolutely loved her. Coleman denies he was planning to divorce Sherri to marry
00:39:14
his mistress Tara. So, why does Tara say that? Um it was discussed on several different
00:39:20
things and, you know, it was a conversation, but there was no specific plans or no dates or nobody asked each
00:39:25
other to be married or anything like that. She also says that you had told her that you were serving divorce papers
00:39:32
to Sherri. You know, unfortunately, and I feel horrible about it. You know, if I ever
00:39:37
talked to to Tara again, that would be something that I would apologize to her about that it that was a lie. I lied to
00:39:43
Tara about that. So, if he didn't murder his family, who did? I have absolutely no clue.
00:39:50
Believe me, I have racked my brain for for 2 and 1/2 years trying to figure that part out.
00:39:56
I just had to stop and give it to God. Just release that and do my best to forgive that forgive that person and
00:40:01
move on. Forgiving and moving on has been [music] difficult for Sherry's friends.
00:40:12
Still struggling to understand this incomprehensible crime. As a Christian, I feel like it's
00:40:18
imperative that I forgive because Jesus forgave me. And I want to forgive with my whole heart.
00:40:28
What makes it so hard to do that? Because they were so innocent. Sherry's friends and family want [music]
00:40:40
to ensure that she, Garrett, and Gavin are never forgotten. So, they've been raising money to help
00:40:47
victims [music] of domestic violence. And they hope to build a new Little League field and name it after those two
00:40:54
[music] young boys who loved to play ball. The boys had their whole life ahead of
00:41:00
them. They didn't deserve it. This should have never [music] happened. Should have never happened.
00:41:26
>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> This was different than any a homicide we've ever really had.
00:42:09
This was a homicide that occurred in someone's bathroom. From the the first moment when we walked
00:42:17
in and saw Becky's [music] body, it was different. She was shot 14 times and there was one
00:42:23
miss. So, there were 15 rounds fired. My mom called my phone. She was understandably hysterical and she just
00:42:33
kept saying Becky's dead. You never expect to get a phone call saying your sister's dead.
00:42:40
It doesn't seem possible. She was an incredible nurse, but she was made to be a mom.
00:42:48
I can't imagine someone looking at someone so beautiful and kind and still thinking
00:42:56
that you should take her life from her. She must have been so scared. This brutal crime has had the Quincy
00:43:04
community on edge and our residents [music] living in fear. How big a story was this initially? It was huge.
00:43:12
Were people scared that there was a killer loose? Definitely. How is this happening in our small town?
00:43:19
Make sure you lock your doors. Turn on exterior lights. There were prowlers in the area right
00:43:27
next door within a week of of her being murdered. They're breaking into cars. They're trying to break into houses.
00:43:34
It wasn't a random prowler. It was an execution. You don't kick down a door, chase them into a bathroom, shoot them
00:43:41
once, and then shoot them that many more times in a random act. This was somebody
00:43:46
who was there with a purpose. Did you think you'd probably be a suspect? I mean, you're the estranged
00:43:54
husband in the middle of a very contentious divorce. I had to kind of make an assumption that
00:44:01
yeah, I probably was going to be a suspect. We learned that he was on Family Feud. It's time to play
00:44:07
Family Feud. He gave a silly answer to a silly question. The question was, what is the number one
00:44:13
regret that people have from their wedding day? What's the biggest mistake you made at your wedding?
00:44:20
Honey, I love you, BUT SAID I DO. >> [screaming] >> NOT MY MISTAKE. NOT MY MISTAKE. I love
00:44:27
my wife. It wasn't said with any malice or or or bad intentions. It was supposed to be
00:44:33
funny. Well, it was the second most popular answer on the board. I do. >> [cheering]
00:44:39
>> It got attention to the case, but it had nothing to do with it. What's the first thing then [music] you
00:44:51
did looking for evidence? We had the detectives go around to all the neighbors to see if they had any video.
00:44:56
That's her house over there? >> Yep. That's Becky's house. >> And this is [music] the neighbor's
00:45:00
driveway? >> the neighbor's driveway. You'll see this person walk across Looks like they have
00:45:05
gloves on. Can't see a face [music] at all. Can't see a face. He can't see hair. He can't
00:45:10
really see anything else. That's not Tim in that video. You can't tell who it is. Can you absolutely say
00:45:17
with certainty that that is Tim Bliefnick? Based on the video evidence alone, absolutely not. That's one piece
00:45:24
of the puzzle. He had everything [music] to lose if that's him and nothing to gain. I wholeheartedly do not believe he
00:45:31
had anything to do with the death of Becky. Did you kill your wife, Becky? >> No, I did not murder Becky. [music] The
00:45:37
idea of of murdering someone, let alone the mother of my kids, is not any part of who I am.
00:46:04
>> [music] [music] >> Josh Jones and Laura Eack have prosecuted hundreds of cases. 11 and 10
00:46:38
seconds. But no case has troubled them quite [music] like the murder of Becky Bliefnick. You put yourself in in the
00:46:45
mind of Becky Bliefnick in the last moments of her life, the fear that she had to be feeling. You can't walk out of
00:46:51
that house and not be affected by it. Becky was just 41 years old when on the afternoon of February 23rd, 2023,
00:47:01
her own father discovered her lifeless on the bathroom floor of her Quincy, Illinois home.
00:47:08
She'd been dead [music] for hours, shot a total of 14 times. None of the wounds were immediately fatal. It took her
00:47:17
minutes to die. It was an emotional response for both of us to to realize not just that she had been executed, but
00:47:25
that her last minutes were lying on a floor alone in the dark, in extreme pain, waiting to
00:47:32
die. Quincy is a quiet town along the Mississippi River where violent [music] crimes are rare and unsettling.
00:47:41
She was a nurse who had three children. I think people were just horrified that a mother of three young boys could be
00:47:47
shot and killed in her own home. Sarah Riley is Becky's older sister and her only sibling. She lives in New York, but
00:47:55
was away on vacation with her husband, Brett Riley, when they got that life-changing call. You just want to
00:48:02
wake up and have it not be real. It's a living nightmare. How fast can we get to the [music] airport,
00:48:09
fly back to New York, unpack our swimsuits, and pack funeral clothes, and get out to Quincy, Illinois,
00:48:16
and just holding each other up [music] in screaming grief. How would you [music] both describe her?
00:48:25
Selfless. That that really captures it. She thought of everybody that was in her
00:48:32
life as somebody important and somebody [music] special. The kids were her world. Becky's three sons, ages 12, 10,
00:48:41
and 5, were not at home at the time of the murder. They were staying [music] with their father, Tim Bliefnick, about
00:48:48
a mile away. The couple was in the process of getting divorced. Tim says that when he couldn't reach Becky on the
00:48:55
23rd, he contacted her father. He said, "Hey, I haven't been able to get ahold of her either. I'm going to go over to
00:49:01
the house." What happened to Becky should have never happened. I did just it still doesn't at times it
00:49:07
still just doesn't feel real. Police quickly determined that the killer had broken into Becky's home by prying
00:49:14
[music] open an upstairs window in one of the children's bedrooms. This video shows a police officer later reenacting
00:49:21
[music] how investigators believe the assailant scaled the house. The person that
00:49:27
climbed up on there, there was a patio chair that was pulled over. They walked past
00:49:33
Becky's windows in her bedroom, and then they went to a room of one of the boys and they pried open, broke the window
00:49:40
open, went in. You could almost trace their path to Becky's room. They had kicked in
00:49:46
or broken in the door violently. Becky then ran into the bathroom, turned around, and got shot. What time do you
00:49:55
believe the intruder entered the house? So, it would have been around 1:11 in the morning because we know that at a
00:50:02
1:11 and 10 seconds Becky tried to call 911 on her cell phone. She dialed 91126 and the phone was
00:50:13
knocked out of her hand and it was found behind the door. Nothing appeared to be stolen and
00:50:18
neighbors didn't see or hear anything, but there was evidence left behind. A partial shoe print near the point of
00:50:26
entry, eight spent 9 mm shell casings, and small pieces of plastic on the floor around Becky's body. We thought it was
00:50:35
unusual when we saw that. It was like, okay, what is this? Detectives canvassing the neighborhood
00:50:42
looking for surveillance video didn't have to go far. Becky's next door neighbors, the Hymans, had installed a
00:50:50
camera on the side of their house after a car break-in more than a year earlier.
00:50:57
It pointed at their driveway, which ran alongside Becky's house. What does it record? They record
00:51:05
movement. So, anytime it senses movement it will notify us on our phones. The Hymans camera didn't capture anything on
00:51:13
the night of the murder, but it did capture something unusual about 24 hours earlier. We've slowed down some of the
00:51:20
videos so you can see them better. At 1:05 a.m. a person was seen walking down the driveway towards the back of Becky's
00:51:29
house. And what appeared to be that same person was seen again 48 minutes later.
00:51:37
This time walking in the opposite direction. The camera had also captured a similar
00:51:43
incident about a week earlier on February 14th, Valentine's Day. I saw that one in the middle of the night and
00:51:51
texted Becky immediately. I had told her we just saw somebody in the driveway and she responded not till
00:51:57
the next morning. And what did she say when she responded? >> That's when she told me that she hadn't
00:52:03
seen anything, but she thought she'd been hearing voices in her backyard and her motion light go on and she was very
00:52:08
paranoid. At the time the Hymans thought it was a neighborhood prowler looking for something to steal. But now with
00:52:16
Becky dead, they began to wonder and investigators did too. Officers went around the entire
00:52:24
neighborhood trying to find more video and we were able to find a video from a house
00:52:31
and we were able to find video from the Quincy bus barn. And those videos showed a person riding
00:52:37
a bike in the direction of Becky's house. After analyzing the recorded times of the videos, authorities began
00:52:44
to suspect that the person seen on the bike was the same person seen in the driveway. Every time you see a person at
00:52:53
the Hyman residence, you see a person riding a bike down the road just a few minutes before you see a person on that
00:53:01
Hyman video. And even though there was no video from the Hyman residence on the morning Becky
00:53:07
was killed there was video of a person on a bike riding in the direction of [music] Becky's house right before the
00:53:15
murder and in the opposite direction right after. And this is not a part of town that people ride bikes in the
00:53:21
middle of the night in winter. And so when you have this surveillance video and it exactly matches the timeline
00:53:28
that's suspicious. But there was [music] one big problem. You can tell absolutely nothing from the
00:53:35
videos. Only that the bike did not [music] appear to have reflectors on the wheels. I mean, you can't see whether
00:53:42
it's male, female. >> It's terrible. The video's terrible. Authorities needed more leads and they
00:53:48
would [music] get one from Becky's sister that would point them in a very specific direction.
00:54:10
When Becky's sister Sarah and brother-in-law Brett learned of her murder, they say one person came to mind
00:54:17
as the prime suspect, Becky's estranged husband [music] Tim Bliefnick. I told Brett it was Tim. Of course it
00:54:24
was Tim. >> right away. Right away. Tim and Becky [music] met when they were students at Quincy University, but it
00:54:32
wasn't until 2 years after graduating that they began dating. And how would you describe Becky back
00:54:39
then? Happy, fun, she was beautiful. The two eventually moved in together, married, and started a family. Becky
00:54:49
quit her job in pharmaceutical sales to become a stay-at-home mom while Tim continued his successful career in the
00:54:57
recycling industry. I thought this was it. You know, I'm going to be 85 and sitting on a porch in
00:55:04
a rocking chair with her talking about how good life was. But things didn't turn out that way.
00:55:13
She was very happy with their marriage for probably the first 5 years. Uh and then, you know, things started to
00:55:22
change. He got progressively more manipulative and controlling. And he didn't do any of the work ever at the
00:55:30
house. Shannon Zanger is Becky's close friend. Uh when she'd come over and we'd talk
00:55:37
husbands as wives do, she felt like she was shouldering most of the load. I thought, man, I really have a partner
00:55:45
here and she doesn't seem to have that partnership. Shannon and Sarah say the relationship only became more strained
00:55:53
when Becky decided to go back to school to become a nurse. He not only did not support her, he did not
00:56:01
increase his time with the boys. While Tim acknowledges that he wasn't in favor of Becky taking on a career in nursing,
00:56:09
he says it was out of concern [music] for her well-being. Because of the stress piece of it.
00:56:16
>> Were you worried you'd have to pick up more of the work with the kids? >> Not at all.
00:56:21
I have always been involved with the kids every day. In January 2021, after 11 years of
00:56:28
marriage, Tim [music] filed for divorce. Although he wouldn't discuss the specifics of why he filed, he hinted
00:56:36
that it had to do with what he saw [music] as a change in Becky's personality after she became a nurse.
00:56:43
She struggled with patience and stress a lot, especially when it came to the kids
00:56:47
and it it created some conflict. But Sarah says Tim is just making excuses and she believes the reason Tim
00:56:56
filed for divorce is because he couldn't control Becky. She says Becky was a loving mother and tried in vain to
00:57:04
salvage the marriage. She wanted to go to marriage counseling with him and he refused.
00:57:11
Whatever the reason for the divorce might have been, one thing is certain. Things between the two soon turned
00:57:18
contentious. According to divorce documents, they fought over just about everything. Money, the marital home, and
00:57:27
custody of the kids. I don't understand why it got so contentious if you were the one who
00:57:33
wanted to get out. Uh yeah, I was the one that wanted to get out and I tried on several occasions, but there are
00:57:40
details that I'm I'm not that are hard to talk about that happened in the divorce.
00:57:50
In the months after Tim filed for divorce, Becky began voicing concerns about Tim's behavior. She sent this text
00:57:58
to a friend. He has screamed in my face. He shoved me in front of the kids and has thrown things across the room. And
00:58:06
she texted another friend. I truly believe Tim has serious mental health problems and he is becoming more
00:58:13
vengeful and unpredictable. But Tim says it was Becky who was vengeful. She told people I had an affair, which
00:58:23
is untrue. She tried to tell people that I was an alcoholic, which is untrue. She was telling people these things
00:58:29
because she was angry about the divorce. At one point Tim sought an order of protection against Becky. He alleged
00:58:40
Becky stalked and harassed [music] him. He also referenced an incident where he said Becky had become combative
00:58:48
during a disagreement at a parent-teacher night. Stop. I'm asking you to stop harassing
00:58:54
me and stop calling I'm not harassing you. I'm asking He offered this video of the incident as proof.
00:59:00
I don't want you to tape me. Then stop doing this. Don't tape me. I don't Then stop doing this. I didn't ask you to
00:59:05
tape me. Do you really think she was trying to hurt him in that video? >> I don't think anybody was trying to hurt
00:59:11
anybody. I think you have two parents that were having a disagreement and didn't know how to deal with it. Casey
00:59:17
Schnock was one of Tim's divorce attorneys. The judge didn't grant that order of protection.
00:59:23
>> it, no. Days after Tim filed for that order of protection and more than a year before
00:59:28
her death, Becky sent her sister Sarah this text, "If something ever happens to me, please make sure the number one
00:59:37
person of interest is Tim." She would later make similar statements to friends. I said, "What did he do?" And that text
00:59:47
was prompted by the murder of one of her colleagues. One of the the nurses that she knew of was
00:59:54
murdered by her partner. That scared her. She felt like this could happen. This is real. I
01:00:02
never understood where that came from. We would get into arguments, and sometimes we would get loud, but that's
01:00:07
all it amounted to. Sarah says she recommended Becky seek help from a domestic abuse organization.
01:00:15
And eventually, Becky filed for an order of protection against Tim. In her petition, she alleged that Tim entered
01:00:24
her residence without permission. She also said that he repeatedly falsified [music] interactions between the two.
01:00:32
That order of protection was not granted. But a judge did ultimately order Tim and Becky stay away from each
01:00:40
other's residences except [music] when exchanging their kids. And the judge also ordered Tim to return a 9-mm
01:00:49
handgun that Becky had gifted him when they were together. He was into you know, recreational shooting. She
01:00:58
wanted that particular gun back because the gun was in her name. But Becky never got it back, and it was
01:01:06
a 9-mm handgun that was later used to kill her. I've not seen that gun in 3 years. I
01:01:13
didn't have it. Becky was killed 1 week before the divorce case was set to go to trial.
01:01:20
When Sarah informed law enforcement of their history, Tim became a person of interest. Authorities kept digging, and
01:01:28
days later, they found [music] a bike with no reflectors on the wheels, just like the one seen on those surveillance
01:01:36
videos. How close was that bike that you found to Tim's house? Less than half a block.
01:01:44
They then [music] executed a search warrant on Tim's house and car as Tim looked on. And on March 13th, 2023,
01:01:53
just over 2 weeks after Becky's death, Tim Bliefnick was arrested and charged with her murder.
01:02:02
I can't even fathom the idea of considering murdering somebody. Like I can't. Tim's divorce attorney, Casey Schnock,
01:02:13
would become his defense attorney. And she says she's convinced police got it wrong.
01:02:20
He knew how much those kids meant to her and how much she meant to them. He wouldn't do this to them.
01:02:26
He wouldn't. When Tim Bliefnick was arrested, it made national news. He competed on Family
01:02:48
Feud as his whole town cheered him on, but his local hero status is over. Now that In large part because of that
01:02:55
appearance he made alongside his parents and brothers on the game show Family Feud. All right, Tim, we're going to
01:03:02
talk to 100 married people. [applause] What's the biggest mistake you made at your wedding?
01:03:05
Honey, I love you, but said I do. The episode was filmed in 2019, nearly 2 years before Tim filed for
01:03:15
divorce. But because of the charges he now face, it had people talking. And there was also chatter about Tim's
01:03:22
appearance in his mug shot, although it was no surprise to Becky's family. We had seen through social media the
01:03:32
deterioration of his appearance. And that went hand in hand with the deterioration of his mental state over
01:03:42
the course of the divorce. But Tim says that's not the case, and that he had been growing out his hair for a
01:03:49
fundraiser for kids or research. I'm not a violent person. I'm not an angry person. I've never been that way.
01:03:56
Tim's attorney, Casey Schnock, was determined to prove his innocence. She says just because Tim and Becky were
01:04:03
going through a messy divorce, it doesn't mean he killed her. It wasn't pretty, but the things that
01:04:09
they were fighting over were not monumental things. >> You know, there were a number of
01:04:14
friends, Becky's friends, who said that she expressed great fear of Tim. Yeah. That's a lot of girl talk. I've
01:04:23
never seen any pictures of her with bruises, of marks, any allegations of him beating on her. Nothing.
01:04:31
But Adams County prosecutors, Josh Jones and Laura Keck, say even though there may not have been physical abuse, there
01:04:39
was emotional abuse evident in Tim's texts to Becky. What do his text messages reveal? So, I
01:04:49
would say what they reveal is somebody who wants power and control. He wants to control the relationship. He wants to
01:04:55
control how people perceive him. Tim denies that. She wasn't the one that was emotionally abused. I tried to create
01:05:03
space. I tried to stay out of her life. And Tim says he has an alibi for the time of the murder. He says he was home
01:05:11
with their three kids. They were sleeping over that night because Becky had asked him to keep them an extra
01:05:18
night. She told him that she wasn't feeling well, and he said that's fine. That's
01:05:24
how you want to see two people in a divorcing situation act with kids. But Jones and Keck believe Tim saw an
01:05:32
opportunity. She showed weakness to a predator. That's what predators do. When they see
01:05:38
a weakness, they attack. And they also say that explains the intruder's point of entry, an upstairs
01:05:46
window in one of the kids' bedrooms. If you're a random intruder, why do you go to the second floor window? You go past
01:05:54
not just one window, but three windows that are possible entrance points. And he just happened to get lucky that it's
01:06:02
a little boy's room that's not there that night. But Schnock points to what she says is a
01:06:09
lack of physical evidence tying Tim to the crime. No murder weapon or bloody clothing was
01:06:17
found. And while police did seize pairs of Tim's shoes, they weren't able to match them to that partial shoe print
01:06:25
found [music] at the scene. They took every single pair of athletic shoes that they thought would be a
01:06:31
match. They didn't find any that that were a suitable match. Schnock also points out that Tim's DNA
01:06:38
wasn't found on that patio chair that investigators believe was used by the killer to climb onto Becky's roof.
01:06:46
Nothing on that was connected to Tim. They took every pair of gloves from Tim's car, house, and and that they
01:06:53
could find, and none of those gloves had any anything that linked him to this crime.
01:06:59
But if Tim didn't kill Becky, who did? If I knew that answer, I would have given that name or whoever it was a long
01:07:08
time ago. Tim's attorney says that she believes investigators should have given more
01:07:13
weight to the idea that it could have been a random prowler who killed Becky in a break-in gone wrong.
01:07:21
Remember, police found those videos of a person on a bike and a person walking down Becky's neighbor's driveway.
01:07:29
Tim insists it's not him in those videos. You cannot say with any degree of certainty who that person is on any of
01:07:39
those videos. All you see is a bike without reflectors. And even though a bike with no
01:07:45
reflectors on the wheels was found less than half a block from Tim's house, Schnock says that doesn't mean anything.
01:07:54
Cuz DNA was not found on that bike, and we don't even know that the bike that was found is the same bike that was in
01:08:00
the video. But prosecutors, Jones and Keck, say they did find evidence tying Tim to that bike. We were able to
01:08:08
download information off his phone, and we found that Mr. Bliefnick had a what I'll call burner or fake Facebook
01:08:15
account with the name John Smith. And they say that John Smith Facebook account appeared to have been looking at
01:08:23
this bike for sale. It's a blue Schwinn with no reflectors on the wheels, just like that bike that was found.
01:08:32
I mean, I have a fake Facebook account. I'm not proud of it, but people do it. >> It isn't it a bit of a problem though
01:08:38
that on his phone, he got some alert for that blue bike? >> Sure. Are there similarities? Sure, but
01:08:44
that's not the only abandoned bike that's been found around town. Jones and Keck say they're confident they got the
01:08:50
right guy. The detectives followed the evidence exactly where it took them, and there
01:08:55
was one inescapable conclusion. That it was Mr. Bliefnick. But despite their confidence, they soon face quite a
01:09:03
challenge. When Tim was arrested, he was ordered held without bond. He had a right to a speedy trial, which he took,
01:09:12
meaning prosecutors would be required to try the case within [music] 90 days of Tim's arrest. We were going to be ready,
01:09:21
come hell or high water. But did they have enough to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
01:09:28
Juries expect a confession. They expect that DNA evidence that says one in 500 million.
01:09:35
We're going to have to show them that that's not what we have here. What do you make of Tim Bliefnick's
01:09:42
answer on Family Feud? Take a look at the case evidence at 48hours.com. On May 23rd, 2023, exactly 3 months
01:09:57
after Becky Bliefnick was gunned down in her home, Tim Bliefnick went on trial for her murder. The defendant looked
01:10:04
down at Becky and he pointed a gun at her and he pulled the trigger. Prosecutors Josh Jones and Laura Cat
01:10:12
began by methodically laying out the evidence they say points directly to Tim. Starting with those odd pieces of
01:10:19
plastic that were found around Becky's body. They say investigators determined that
01:10:25
they were shreds from an Aldi grocery store bag. And then in the defendant's house,
01:10:32
we found stacks of Aldi bags. He had fired through an Aldi bag either in an attempt to muffle the sound or to catch
01:10:39
his shell casings. >> [music] >> And prosecutors say that in the process, DNA was left behind on a piece of that
01:10:45
plastic. An expert testified that it was more likely than not that Tim was a contributor.
01:10:53
And Tim also could [music] be excluded from DNA that was found under Becky's fingernails.
01:11:00
That was three times more likely to have come from the defendant or a male relative uh from the lineage of the
01:11:07
defendant. And this case is drowning with reasonable doubt. But defense attorney Casey Schnack says that
01:11:14
evidence is far from definitive. Everybody in town has Aldi bags that they're hoarding. They could have came
01:11:21
from Becky's house. With DNA from him? Well, because they transferred stuff for the boys in Aldi bags. There was DNA
01:11:29
found under Becky's fingernails. And it was just as likely to be Tim's as any one of the boys.
01:11:36
Prosecutors also told the jury that police found this crowbar in Tim's basement. And they called an expert to
01:11:43
the stand who testified that she compared it to tool marks >> [music] >> left on the window that was pried open
01:11:50
at Becky's. While there were microscopic consistencies, she couldn't say with scientific
01:11:57
certainty that that crowbar made those marks. The expert said that that was inconclusive. Inconclusive leaves a jury
01:12:06
guessing and speculating which they are not allowed to do. The jury heard about the couple's acrimonious divorce and
01:12:13
from Becky's sister and several friends who testified about those fears Becky had raised about Tim. Several of them
01:12:20
acknowledged that they regretfully didn't take steps to help her. How could Tim do that? I've known Tim forever.
01:12:27
When she reached out to people, That's what they said. In hindsight, of course, like oh
01:12:33
we should have done more. There's only one person that believed it was true and that was Becky herself.
01:12:41
And the prosecution argued that the timing of the murder is significant. Remember, Becky was killed 1 week before
01:12:50
the couple's divorce case was set to go to trial. And prosecutors told the jury there was something even bigger than
01:12:57
money and custody that was going to come into play. Becky didn't want their three
01:13:03
children to be around the defendant's father unsupervised. They didn't tell the jury why, but we
01:13:09
uncovered these court documents that reveal Becky had gathered witnesses who she said planned to testify about Tim's
01:13:17
father, Ray Bliefnick, and would allege that he had a history of perversion and abusing minor children many years
01:13:26
earlier. The alleged victims were not Becky and Tim's children. Becky sought an order of
01:13:32
protection against Ray, but a judge denied her request. In a letter, Ray's lawyer wrote that Ray vehemently denies
01:13:40
the claims and that he has never been charged with any criminal offense stemming from the allegations.
01:13:48
Information was going to come out that he didn't want to come out and he started to feel like he was losing
01:13:53
control. The prosecution pointed out that on the day of Becky's murder, hours before
01:13:59
anyone except her killer knew that she was dead, Tim brought a kids basketball hoop to his father's house. He's doing
01:14:08
that because he knows Becky's not going to be a problem anymore. Becky didn't want those boys around Ray.
01:14:14
And in Tim's mind, that problem was solved because Becky was dead. I really don't buy that.
01:14:20
>> Why not? Because the boys weren't restricted from seeing Ray to begin with. They just
01:14:26
couldn't see him without supervision. So And Schnack says those allegations were
01:14:30
old news. >> All of those allegations were in pleadings that her attorneys had filed
01:14:35
and at that point were already a matter of public record. It doesn't make sense that he would throw his life away over a
01:14:42
divorce and keeping information out of the public eye that quite frankly was already out.
01:14:49
But the prosecution wasn't done. The jury was also shown numerous damaging searches found on Tim's phone like how
01:14:57
to open my door with a crowbar, how to make a homemade pistol silencer, and how to clean gunpowder off your hands.
01:15:07
It was mind-boggling. >> It was mind-boggling, yeah. And remember that person caught on
01:15:11
camera in Becky's neighbor's driveway on Valentine's Day, about a week before the
01:15:17
murder? Well, prosecutors say that right after [music] that sighting, Tim made more
01:15:23
than 200 searches online for a specific license plate and a car VIN number. It turns out that that license plate and
01:15:32
VIN number belonged to a man whom Becky was dating and his truck was parked in Becky's driveway at the time.
01:15:41
And for somebody with power and control issues, you realize that your prior significant other is now in a
01:15:46
relationship with somebody that they're spending the night on Valentine's Day, and then the minute you get back to your
01:15:51
home at 1:10 in the morning, you're searching their license plate number and their VIN number. That's somebody who's
01:15:58
lost control. Tim insists he had learned about Becky's new relationship months earlier. I
01:16:05
actually didn't care. It sounds like you were kind of obsessed cuz No. He declined to go into more detail
01:16:12
about specific trial evidence citing legal proceedings, but his lawyer spoke for him. I mean, if I'm going to be
01:16:20
checking out my husband's new girlfriend, I'm going to be doing it late at night after my kids are asleep.
01:16:25
>> So it's just a coincidence that the night you see that prowler at the next door neighbor's driveway and his truck
01:16:32
is there, it's just a coincidence that just minutes later Tim is doing research on the VIN number
01:16:40
and the license tag. >> Tim in that video. What about the searches that were found on Tim's phone?
01:16:46
>> There's no date or time as to when those searches were done. So we don't know if they were done
01:16:52
before the murder and we don't know if they were done after the murder. Before they rested the case, prosecutors
01:16:59
dropped one more piece of evidence. These spent shell casings that were found in Tim's home. An expert testified
01:17:07
that she compared them to the shell casings found at the crime scene and determined that 27 of them had been
01:17:14
fired from the exact [music] same gun used in the murder. Each firearm leaves its own fingerprint on every shell
01:17:23
casing that it fires. It was the same gun that killed Becky Bliefnick that fired these shell casings that were
01:17:30
found in Tim Bliefnick's residence. That's the expert's opinion. At the end of the day, it's subject to human error
01:17:36
like anything else. But when it was the defense's turn to call witnesses, it chose to call none.
01:17:44
You could have brought in your own expert to say those did not match. >> I guess we could have, but we were
01:17:49
strapped on time and funds. You've got a man's life on the line. >> And he didn't want us to do that.
01:17:57
>> [music] >> It was a risky move, but one that may have paid off for the defense because
01:18:03
when the jury began deliberating, they took a vote and there was a holdout. Sometimes you just need one.
01:18:22
When the jury began deliberating after a 6-day trial, Tim Bliefnick was on edge.
01:18:29
It was miserable because I was essentially waiting for them to decide my fate. Inside that jury room,
01:18:36
one juror was undecided. Our stomachs were in knots. We [music] were beyond stressed.
01:18:43
But 4 hours later, a verdict. And when they passed the paper from the jury box to
01:18:51
the clerk. To the clerk, that was very difficult to know that there's a possibility
01:18:58
that he could get away with it. Would the clerk read the verdicts, please? We, the jury, find the defendant, Timothy
01:19:06
Bliefnick, guilty of first-degree murder. Guilty. It was a sense of relief that they had
01:19:15
found him guilty, but it was also a sense of these three little boys have now lost both parents. It's not a
01:19:19
celebration. When we sat down with Tim Bliefnick, [music] it was just over a month after his
01:19:28
conviction. He was still awaiting sentencing. Did you ever imagine you would be [music] here? No.
01:19:36
No, never. At times it's felt like I'm watching somebody else's life from the outside. Like it it it it can't be me.
01:19:45
But the only thing I can do right now is what we are doing, filing an appeal. I have to I have to believe in that
01:19:50
process. Cuz if not Tell me what you're thinking right now. My kids. I just want them to know that I love
01:20:07
them, that I miss them. I'm innocent. I didn't kill Becky. But Becky's sister says Tim is right
01:20:15
where he belongs. He called my dad to set him up to find her. That alone shows how cruel he really is. As
01:20:26
agonizing as our pain is. I want him to understand his worst crime was against his children.
01:20:41
And that's the message Sarah delivered directly to Tim during her victim impact [music] statement right before he was
01:20:48
sentenced on August 11th, 2023. Your children's future will be forever impacted by your crime.
01:20:57
They are already suffering. Maybe you should have Googled childhood PTSD in between your internet searches for
01:21:04
homemade silencers and VIN numbers. Judge Robert Adrian had the option of sentencing Tim to anywhere
01:21:12
between 45 years to life. Mr. Bliefnick, you researched this murder. You planned this murder. You broke into
01:21:25
her house. And you shot her. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 times. The court believes that the appropriate
01:21:38
sentence would be natural life in prison. Life in prison without the possibility
01:21:48
of parole. Prosecutors Jones and Keck say the punishment fits the crime, but even they
01:21:55
don't consider it justice. If I had a magic wand, I would bring Becky back to life. Tim
01:22:02
can spend the rest of his life out of prison. That would be justice. But I can't. What we can do is we can hold her
01:22:09
killer accountable, and that's all we can do. Now Becky's family is left to focus on
01:22:14
all they have left of her, memories, and the loves of her life, [music] her three
01:22:20
boys who are now living with her parents. We will all work together to [music] make sure those boys
01:22:26
have the life they deserved. And we started a GoFundMe to um support the boys. And Becky's [music] family and friends
01:22:35
hope that Becky's mission in life will now become her legacy. Becky would have wanted
01:22:44
positive change to happen. She would want somebody else's life to be saved. If we can learn anything, if
01:22:52
somebody reaches out to you and says that they're scared, they believe that their partner or whoever it is
01:23:00
is capable of violence, need to believe them. And make an active effort to make sure they're safe.
01:23:32
CBS next Saturday, 48 Hours brings you back-to-back episodes all summer long. Next week, survivor stories. I was the
01:23:41
only one that could walk out of there still alive. Someone want to meet them. 48 Hours
01:23:47
crime time double feature next Saturday 9:00 8:00 Central on CBS and streaming on Paramount Plus.
01:24:02
>> [music] >> If you just look at this case and you go this is a man who killed his wife for
01:24:10
money. That doesn't tell you half the story. Paul Curry is a self-centered, devious
01:24:20
evildoer. I see him as a cold-blooded killer who's gotten away with it for almost 20 years.
01:24:27
This isn't an accident. This isn't an It's not a suicide. It's a homicide. She was being poisoned. She was ingesting
01:24:34
something that was making her ill. Is there something weird in her lipstick? Is he putting something in her
01:24:39
fingernail polish? She died from a massive nicotine poisoning, catastrophic levels of nicotine in her system.
01:24:46
[music] No, she's not a smoker. She doesn't smoke. Nicotine poisoning, how common is
01:24:52
that? Nicotine is one of the strongest poison ever. Linda was absolutely fun. We took our
01:25:03
high heels out, we dressed up, we fixed our hair and makeup, and we went dancing
01:25:08
on the weekends. She was a career woman, was making good money at that time. She did call me and tell me she'd met
01:25:15
this guy at work and that he was so so smart. >> [music] >> People describe them as a genius.
01:25:23
People describe them as knows everything about everything. This is Jeopardy. He was on Jeopardy? He was.
01:25:31
And he won he won like 26, 27,000 dollars back in the 80s. >> [music] >> Linda said, you know, Paul and I are
01:25:40
going to go and get married. Ends up getting in the car, going to Vegas. He wasn't the most handsome man.
01:25:46
He was very short. He didn't have a whole lot to work with. It wasn't looks. It wasn't money. It was
01:25:55
the idea that I am with somebody who's so brilliant. They'd been married maybe a month, and
01:26:03
she called me one night and says, you know, Mary, Paul wants to take out a million dollar life insurance policy on
01:26:08
me. What do you think? Are you crazy? Are you kidding me? Why would you do that?
01:26:18
You know what happened to Linda? She starts getting sick. Weak, fatigued, just looking bad. She was so thin. Bunch
01:26:27
of doctors had no idea why. He's being the loving husband to [music] his wife. Oh, honey, I'm sorry you're so sick. And
01:26:33
in the back of his mind, he's got to be thinking, how is she not dead? How much of this nicotine do I got to give her to
01:26:38
kill her, for crying out loud? Do you have any eyewitnesses ever seen him give her any kind of poison? No. Is
01:26:45
there any evidence he obtained nicotine? Direct evidence, no, there's no evidence. This is a hard case, but I
01:26:52
have no doubt whatsoever that he did it. And I believe I'm going to be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
01:26:58
>> [music] >> I'm Erin [music] Moriarty. Tonight on 48 Hours, to catch [music] a genius.
01:27:23
>> [music] >> She's not going to make it if she stays with him. I said, you got to get away
01:27:38
from him. He's trying to kill you. It's obvious. I said, believe. Get out of there. Linda, I got to get you out of
01:27:46
the house. To this day, friends like Mary Seabolt Just get out of that house. and Bill Sandretto I can't believe she
01:27:54
wants to stay there. can't understand why Linda Curry never left her husband Paul. There's no doubt in my mind that
01:28:01
she loved him. She died because she loved him. Orange County prosecutor Rahim Baig is taking on a case that's
01:28:08
been unsolved for nearly two decades. But he believes he'll be the one to prove Paul Curry poisoned Linda with
01:28:16
nicotine. Up to the moment she died, that few minutes before midnight on June 9th, 1994, in her mind, he's the loving
01:28:28
husband who's holding my hand, who loves me, who plays music for me, who tells me
01:28:33
all the nice stuff. So, she wasn't going to believe anything about him. She said,
01:28:37
oh, Paul such a good husband, he wouldn't do that. >> [music] >> Mary Seabolt was one of Linda's closest
01:28:48
friends. It was instant bonding. The two met in the 1960s when they both worked at Southern California Edison inside the
01:28:58
San Onofre nuclear power plant. She was tall, I was tall. She loved to eat, I loved to eat, and we could eat in those
01:29:05
days. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Linda? Fashionista. Fashionista.
01:29:11
>> Always a nice new outfit with shoes to match, purse to match, earrings to match, bracelets to match. The two
01:29:17
career women started at entry-level positions, but quickly moved up. We were go-getters and we wanted to get ahead.
01:29:25
As Linda advanced in her career, moving from secretary to management, she divorced two husbands and began dating
01:29:33
Bill Sandretto, a life insurance salesman. What was it that drew you to her? What was it about her? She had a
01:29:40
great personality, very loving. We went on trips together. We had a great time. Linda and Sandretto dated on and off for
01:29:48
8 years, but he didn't want to get married. The only thing that was bothering me is where she spent money.
01:29:55
And she would spend a lot of money? She would spend it, yeah. For every dollar she made, she spent two.
01:30:00
I used to go crazy. And Linda kept spending, buying herself a big house in San Clemente. I have
01:30:11
never seen a more beautiful house in my whole life. Frankie Thurber was a close friend and co-worker. Linda's house was
01:30:19
a dream house. It's where a princess would live. And Linda thought she had met her prince when she started dating
01:30:26
Paul Curry in 1989. He was 32 years old and she was 45. They would talk their little baby talk.
01:30:35
Oh, Linda Linda my you know, little and the little nicknames. It was a little bit sickening. Curry was hired as an
01:30:42
engineer to consult at Southern California Edison, teaching the power plant's nuclear engineers about safety
01:30:50
issues. Paul had a sterling reputation. He was extremely smart. Mike Flower was Curry's boss. The only real complaint
01:30:59
most people had with Paul was that he was too smart. Too smart? >> Too smart. But when people would say
01:31:05
he's too smart, was that because he's arrogant too or just because he showed everybody else up?
01:31:11
>> He He let people know, but in a playful way. I thought that he was very egotistical. He thought highly of
01:31:19
himself. There was no doubt about it. Curry bragged about winning all those thousands on Jeopardy and being a member
01:31:26
of Mensa, the International Society of people with high IQs. But that didn't bother Linda. The two got married on
01:31:35
September 12th, 1992, 3 years after they began dating. A passionate relationship? I don't think
01:31:44
passion played into this relationship. I think it was a comfort, but it wasn't passion. It wasn't passion. Linda
01:31:50
wondered why her much younger new husband seemed so uninterested. How did you know that they weren't
01:31:57
having any sex? She told me. >> [music] >> And then there were the money issues.
01:32:04
Paul and Linda had combined annual salaries of at least $140,000, but Linda noticed she had less money
01:32:12
than ever. The reason soon became clear. Curry was helping to support two ex-wives and three children, families
01:32:22
he'd kept hidden from Linda. It was just those little lies that just kept coming
01:32:27
up. Lies and suspicious behavior, like that $1 million life insurance policy Curry asked Linda to buy, making him the
01:32:38
beneficiary. He comes into this marriage with practically nothing and she's got a
01:32:43
beautiful house, beautiful furniture, beautiful clothes, wonderful circle of friends. And what is he bringing to the
01:32:48
table? And now he wants a life insurance policy on her for a million dollars. Red flag.
01:32:54
Linda never got that extra policy, but it hardly mattered because as Curry knew, Linda already had several life
01:33:02
insurance policies worth almost a million dollars and Curry was named the beneficiary on some of them. I said,
01:33:10
"Get him off. You need to change your life policy right away." That's when she told me, "So I'll give
01:33:16
it to you." And I said, "No, don't give it to me. Give it to your sister." But Linda, who had been married just
01:33:24
half a year at that point in 1993, was torn. So she asked Frankie, who was then looking for an apartment, to
01:33:32
temporarily move into the Curry house and spy on Paul. She was afraid that Paul didn't really love her and she
01:33:41
said, "Frankie, would you do me a favor? Would you watch Paul and see if you think he's genuine with me, that he
01:33:48
really cares about me?" And that's when I started watching every move that he made, basically.
01:33:56
Frankie didn't see anything wrong. In fact, quite the opposite. And I went back to her and I said, "Linda, I
01:34:05
I've watched everything. I I don't see it. He dotes over you. He loves you. He can't do enough for you. I don't know
01:34:12
why you would be questioning that." Even Mary, never a big fan of Paul's, was impressed by the way he pampered Linda.
01:34:20
He would prepare these exotic, wonderful new salad dressings as a test and then send her upstairs for a hot bath.
01:34:29
Every night he would draw her a bubble bath. I mean, huge bubbles. I said, "Linda, I would kill to have somebody
01:34:35
draw me a bubble bath. Of course he loves you." In July of 1993, just short of her first wedding
01:34:45
anniversary, Linda came down with a mysterious illness. She said, "I just don't feel well. I just don't feel like
01:34:53
myself." And she couldn't figure out why she all of a sudden she'd get sick. She
01:34:58
became so violently ill that she needed to be hospitalized. When I saw Linda in that bed,
01:35:05
>> [music] >> honest to God, she looked like an 80-year-old woman. Her organs were failing.
01:35:12
They said they didn't even know if she's going to make it that night. >> [music]
01:35:37
>> Linda Curry came in with gastrointestinal problems. It was July 1993. Linda Curry was rushed to Samaritan
01:35:46
Medical Center in San Clemente. I was assigned to take care of her that evening. Sherry Bundy is a registered
01:35:53
nurse. She was nauseated. She had some vomiting. I checked her IV. So she's connected to an IV at the time. Yes.
01:36:02
>> Why? For hydration. As she was checking that IV drip, Bundy noticed something
01:36:08
odd. There was a [music] overhead light and I could see the IV bag was cloudy because of the light shining behind it,
01:36:18
which I knew was not right. How unusual is that? It's very unusual. Bundy reported the incident to hospital
01:36:26
brass and the bag was sent to the lab. Oh my God, Linda. Among Linda's visitors was Bill Sandretto, her former
01:36:34
boyfriend. She was just emaciated, you know. What was the cause of this? They didn't know at the hospital.
01:36:43
Poisoning was suspected. Linda was hospitalized for 21 days. She had a stroke and nearly died. And then lab
01:36:52
workers discovered lidocaine, a numbing agent, in the contaminated IV bag and reported the incident to the police.
01:37:00
They began an investigation that focused on one person, her husband, Paul. This is what's so fascinating about this
01:37:08
case. He was [snorts] a suspect in poisoning her before she died. Back then, prosecutor Brahim Baytieh was
01:37:21
still in law school, but eventually in 2006, the case landed on his desk at the Orange County District Attorney's
01:37:29
Office. He was surprised to find detectives at the time had audiotaped their interviews
01:37:36
with Linda. These are the old microcassettes that they used back in the early to mid-90s. Very unusual to
01:37:42
have a case where you had investigators ask the victim, who ends up getting killed, about the conduct of the person
01:37:50
who killed them. Paul is your husband? Uh-huh. And how long have you been married? Not
01:37:54
quite a year. Police investigators interviewed Linda in her hospital bed in August 1993
01:38:01
and zeroed in on the key question. If somebody were trying to do something to you, if they were trying to poison you,
01:38:09
any idea who would try to do that? Well, the only person I could think of that would have a motive to do it would be
01:38:15
Paul. Um and the only motive I can think of is money, but I don't want to really even
01:38:21
believe that or think that. Linda was candid with detectives, admitting that her new husband was sneaky about money
01:38:29
issues and had lied about his past marriages and children. Still, there was one very big but. Do you still love
01:38:38
Paul? Yeah, I love him very much. Do you believe he loves you? I want to believe that he does. He's
01:38:45
certainly very convincing. Her friends were telling her, "Run." Her co-workers were telling her, "Run."
01:38:51
You take all that and she's saying, "But he loves me and he takes care of me and I like how I'm feeling because of
01:39:01
what he's saying and I like how I'm feeling because of what he's doing." And she doesn't run away. She stays.
01:39:12
Linda stayed Paul and recovered. In the meantime, the police investigation went nowhere. But then, just 5 months later,
01:39:21
in December 1993, she was again hit with a mystery illness. This time, Paul took her [music] to a
01:39:29
different hospital, but the story was much the same. She looked like death warmed over. Linda's friend, Mary
01:39:36
Seibold, was very concerned. Something's happening to her. They don't figure out
01:39:41
what it is. I didn't know if she's even going to make it. And how was Paul acting through this? Caring and
01:39:47
involved. But Linda told Mary that her IV bag had been tampered with yet again. [music]
01:39:53
An alarm had gone off soon after a nurse reported seeing Paul leave Linda's room.
01:39:59
This time, the hospital staff put a clear sign on Linda's door. It would say, "Mr. Curry, your husband, is not
01:40:07
allowed unaccompanied into the hospital room." What did you think when you saw this sign on the door? Well, I knew that
01:40:15
other people had a suspicion that perhaps Paul was doing something to his wife. In fact, the police were again called
01:40:26
and [music] did a second audio-taped interview. Linda told cops that Paul was running up high credit card bills, but
01:40:33
she still remained fiercely loyal. He's a wonderful man. I love him. And he's always
01:40:40
good to me. >> [music] >> The next day, detectives interviewed Paul Curry, but he stuck to his story
01:40:48
that he had no idea why Linda was getting sick. I was completely befuddled when doctors couldn't solve the problem.
01:40:56
I couldn't solve the problem. With Linda still in the hospital, Mary found documents in the Curry house that fueled
01:41:03
her suspicions about Paul. On the highboy dresser, as I walk into the room, there's a bunch of papers. Well, I
01:41:09
just kind of glanced at them, but in big script writing, I saw the word life insurance in gold writing, and I went,
01:41:15
"Oh, life insurance." And then I went, "Oh, more life insurance policies. Oh, they're all here. They're all out on
01:41:21
this highboy dresser on the top of it." Now, all the red flags are adding up to crimson. I mean, it's really red now.
01:41:29
Mary questioned Linda after she was released from the hospital. I'm asking her, "Did Did you have those things out,
01:41:35
Linda? Is this something you're looking at?" Well, she hadn't been home. No, not
01:41:39
at all. I said, "Linda, Linda, put it together. Put it together, and let's let's talk about what's going on
01:41:46
there." Mary warned Linda that she believed Curry was getting ready to cash in by killing Linda. She said, "You're
01:41:55
right. There's something going on, and and I need to get out of here." The next day, it was like the door slammed on me,
01:42:01
and she said, "No, Mary, no. No, I I can't. I I can't leave Paul." Did she say the reason why she couldn't leave is
01:42:08
cuz she didn't believe that he would do this? You know, she was in such denial. 6 months went by, and then on June 9th,
01:42:22
1994, Mary received an email from Curry that said Linda was feeling worse than ever.
01:42:29
I said, "Linda Curry's going to die. Paul's going to finally get to poison her, and and she's going to die."
01:42:34
>> [music] >> That very evening, sometime around midnight, Curry says he awoke to find
01:42:41
Linda barely breathing. Linda did not respond. [music] He calls 911, gives her CPR.
01:42:48
Paramedics arrive. No heartbeat, no pulse. Take her to the hospital, she dies. Nurse Bundy heard the news the next day
01:42:57
when she reported to work at Samaritan Hospital. What did you think? My first thought was he finally did it.
01:43:05
And my second thought was somebody really dropped the ball. >> [music] [music] >> I received a phone call about 1:00 in
01:43:22
the morning on the night of her death. One of the first to hear of Linda Curry's death on that June night in 1994
01:43:30
was Paul Curry's good [music] friend and boss, Mike Flower. Can you come to the the home of Paul and Linda Curry? And I
01:43:37
said, "I'll be right there." What did you [music] think? Linda was dead. Like everyone who knew the couple, Flower was
01:43:44
aware that Linda had been sick. He rushed to the Curry home in San Clemente. Paul was very emotional. He cried on my
01:43:53
shoulder for hours. And what did he tell you had happened? I can't believe she's
01:43:58
gone. Her sister called me. The next day, word spread to Linda's good friends, Bill Sandretto,
01:44:07
I said, "Oh my [music] god." and Frankie Thurber. I said, "What?" She was like a sister to
01:44:13
me. She just was almost even like a mother to me. Mary Seibold heard the news from her
01:44:20
husband. I knew that all my premonitions were true. I knew that it was Paul, and
01:44:25
I knew that uh no one could save her. Linda's friends wondered if Paul had poisoned her by putting something in his
01:44:34
special salad dressings and all those bubble baths. He knew everyone was looking at him as a
01:44:41
suspect. Didn't you like think, "No way would this guy actually kill her when he
01:44:45
knew he'd be the first suspect?" >> You know, he was such a con man and and and such a narcissist and such a
01:44:52
psychopath, I just think he thought, "I am so much smarter than anybody. I can do this."
01:45:00
Paul Curry knew that there is no way he could murder his wife and not be a suspect. His objective was not to
01:45:07
eliminate himself as a suspect. His objective was to make sure he doesn't get charged with the crime.
01:45:13
During the autopsy, the medical examiner found an unusual mark behind Linda's right ear that could have been left by a
01:45:20
syringe. Then, toxicology reports revealed what Linda's friends had long suspected.
01:45:28
She had been poisoned. And now they knew the cause, nicotine. A lot of nicotine.
01:45:38
People say, "Well, maybe she's a smoker." No, she's not a smoker. She doesn't smoke. It's not possible she
01:45:45
could have gotten that amount of nicotine over a period of time building up in her system?
01:45:50
>> Absolutely not. The toxicology reports also revealed the presence of a large amount of the
01:45:57
generic form of Ambien, a sleeping medication, in Linda's [music] body. Her death was declared a homicide, but
01:46:04
there was no evidence to connect Paul Curry to the nicotine, the sleeping pills, or a syringe,
01:46:11
>> [music] >> so he could not be charged. The fact that he wasn't charged with the
01:46:16
crime wasn't because somebody dropped the ball. It's because he was able to cover his tracks.
01:46:22
Curry was about to get away with murder, free to start a new life, and to claim the money from Linda's estate.
01:46:32
He told people he's going to get a million dollars out of it. That was his plan. Not so fast.
01:46:37
>> [music] >> As it turns out, Linda had drafted this handwritten note giving her sister
01:46:43
approximately half her estate. [music] Curry was apoplectic. After he found out that things weren't
01:46:52
as easy to get all the money, and he called me, and and he said, "Did you know Did Did Did Did Did Did you know
01:46:58
anything about about Linda changing and and her and and and and and her sister Pat is going to get your" And he was
01:47:03
like stuttering. But incredibly, despite all of Linda's suspicions, she remained faithful to
01:47:10
Paul even in death. She left him her house and close to a half a million dollars, quote,
01:47:18
"so he'll be okay." If she thought he was killing her, why would she want to leave him money?
01:47:24
>> Because she never allowed herself to believe what was obvious to anybody and everybody.
01:47:30
And that's the power of the heart. >> [music] >> After Linda died, Paul Curry was
01:47:37
transferred from his old job at the nuclear power plant, and that's when a routine security check revealed a pack
01:47:45
of lies in his resume. He was not an engineer. He didn't even have a college degree. The brilliant Mensa member who
01:47:53
trained nuclear engineers was a complete fraud. So, I called Paul up at the end of the
01:48:00
day, and I said, "Paul, I'm coming in tomorrow morning at 8:00, and I'm going to fire you unless your
01:48:08
resignation is on my fax." And I came in the next morning, and his resignation was on my fax.
01:48:14
But thanks [music] to Linda, Paul Curry collected $419,000 from two of Linda's life insurance
01:48:22
policies and her retirement plan. He also began collecting her retirement benefit of $564
01:48:30
every month. But even with all that money, he let Linda's beloved house slip away.
01:48:38
He let the house go into foreclosure, and he got out of Dodge and went to Vegas. And I understand that he got a
01:48:45
job as a used car salesman, which I found quite intriguing because a con artist is a really good car
01:48:53
salesman. But it wasn't long before Curry conned his way into a new job, this time becoming a building inspector.
01:49:04
Years went by, and the police investigation into Linda Curry's murder came to a complete standstill.
01:49:11
The case badly needed a fresh set of eyes. It was 2002. I was working in our cold case unit. Sergeant Yvonne Schou of
01:49:20
the Orange County Sheriff's Department inherited Linda Curry's murder from a retiring detective. I would know what it
01:49:27
was. It was greatest thing. She immediately focused on those old audio taped interviews of Linda. If somebody
01:49:34
were trying to do something to you, if they were trying to poison you, any idea who would try to do that? Well,
01:49:40
the only person I could think of that would have a motive to do it would be Paul.
01:49:45
Schou began digging into Paul Curry's background. I started with who is Paul Curry?
01:49:53
Everywhere I looked about Paul Curry, it was false. It was fake. For 4 years, Schou re-examined the
01:50:00
entire case, re-interviewed witnesses, and then in 2006, she felt she had enough to take it to
01:50:09
Baytieh. She says, you know, I have this cold case that I've been working on. So,
01:50:13
I said, bring me the file. She comes back few hours later with about 25 binders.
01:50:20
Baytieh plunged in, studying the case for 3 years until 2009, when he reached out to the nicotine
01:50:28
expert who had been hired years before to analyze Linda Curry's blood. Dr. Neal Benowitz. And I said, do you remember
01:50:36
that case? It didn't take him long to remember, oh yeah, I remember that high level.
01:50:41
And what Dr. Benowitz had to say shocked Baytieh. He said, all that he needed to do
01:50:48
is to go into a grocery store and buy a pack of cigarettes. How often have you seen nicotine used
01:51:08
as a murder weapon? Never. I I've read about it, but I've never seen it. Until now? Until now, yes.
01:51:16
Dr. Neal Benowitz, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, is one of the country's
01:51:23
preeminent experts on nicotine. This was beyond anything we've ever measured. The
01:51:28
levels four or five times higher than anything we'd ever seen before. Even after two decades, Benowitz
01:51:35
remembers the Linda Curry case because of the catastrophic levels of nicotine discovered in her body back in 1994.
01:51:44
How do you believe she had to have gotten that nicotine? Well, I think most likely it was by an intravenous
01:51:50
injection. It's the only possible explanation, [music] says Dr. Benowitz. And remember, the
01:51:57
medical examiner did find a puncture mark behind Linda's right ear. Can you say how soon she had to die
01:52:05
after she got that dose of nicotine? It was my thought that death must have been
01:52:09
within 20 or 30 minutes. Dr. Benowitz says he does not remember discussing that time frame with the
01:52:17
original investigators 20 years ago. But now, says Baytieh, that one fact turns the entire case.
01:52:28
The nicotine was introduced into Linda's system during this time frame, and the only other human being who had access to
01:52:35
her is Paul Curry. Curry's story has always [music] been that on the night Linda died, the two of
01:52:43
them were home alone for approximately 6 hours. Baytieh believes Curry injected Linda
01:52:50
>> [music] >> after knocking her out with a heavy dose of Ambien. I think she comes home, he introduces
01:52:56
Ambien into her system, whether it's by way of food or a drink or a salad or one
01:53:00
of his fancy dressings, um when she's out, when she's sedated, he takes that syringe that he had ready
01:53:07
with nicotine, he injects her with the nicotine, and he waits until he is sure that
01:53:13
she's not going to survive this one. But where would Paul Curry get so much nicotine?
01:53:19
The answer is frightening. Curry only needed to buy a pack of cigarettes. If you have a pack of
01:53:26
cigarettes, you can have 300 mg of nicotine. And that's way above the lethal dose for
01:53:32
a person. >> [music] >> The case was rounding into shape, but Baytieh wanted more.
01:53:40
Sergeant Yvonne Schou tracked Curry to Salina, Kansas, where he had a new wife, a new son, and a new job working as a
01:53:49
building inspector. Finally, Curry would have to answer some tough questioning, and Schou was ready
01:53:56
to take him on face to face. I was afraid that if we told him we were from Orange County that he wouldn't talk
01:54:02
to us. So, prosecutor Baytieh came up with a plan to trick Paul Curry into believing
01:54:09
he was being questioned by two local detectives who had no knowledge of the case. Sergeant Yvonne Schou would be
01:54:17
playing the part of Marie. Paul Curry, Hi, I'm Marie. Marie, Paul Curry, nice to meet you.
01:54:23
On November 9th, 2010, the Salina police chief tells Curry that Orange County investigators are just trying to close
01:54:31
out a death investigation, and so they requested Salina detectives to ask Curry a few questions. I'm going to shut this
01:54:39
so we can The chief of police said, oh, he's a building inspector, he's very smart, he's never going to talk to you.
01:54:44
What was your reaction when he said yes? Were you shocked? >> I couldn't believe it.
01:54:48
I I thought to myself, well, he's not as smart as he thinks he is. I guess this involves something with
01:54:56
um a woman named Melinda. That's my my ex-wife. We were married. She passed away. Okay,
01:55:03
how long were We go into the interview, and our plan was for the first part of it, let him think he is in complete
01:55:09
control. So, he's thinking, I'm going to absolutely run circles around them because they don't know anything about
01:55:13
the case, and they're from Kansas, I am smarter than they are. >> [sighs] >> But then, Schou takes over, and the
01:55:20
meandering interview becomes a targeted interrogation. The night that Linda passed away,
01:55:29
you and Linda were alone. Is that correct? That's right. Was there anybody else in the house?
01:55:36
Schou is locking Curry into the story that he's told all these years, leaving him no room to back away from it later.
01:55:44
So, nobody snuck into the house. There was no burglary at the house. There was no robbery at the house.
01:55:52
Nothing like that. It was just you and Linda. Mhm. He has now boxed himself in, and Schou
01:55:59
gives it to him straight. Paul, I believe that the cause of Linda's illness and the
01:56:06
cause of Linda's death are at your hands. And before I ask you any other questions, I feel like I need to read
01:56:11
you your rights. Are you arresting me? Not yet. But for such a smart guy, Paul Curry does not do
01:56:21
the smart thing. He keeps talking. [music] Were you slowly poisoning her? No. No.
01:56:28
Of course not. No. Despite the grilling, a detached Curry seems to have other things on his mind.
01:56:35
And when Schou leaves the room briefly, Curry shows his impatience. Should I presume that I'm not going to
01:56:44
make my 4:00 meeting today? Yes. Why is that? I don't know how long this is going to
01:56:55
take. Well, what what is this that is taking? Does this trump my obligation to my employer?
01:57:02
It's going to be awfully hard to explain professionally. That's the least of his worries.
01:57:13
At this point, Paul, you are not free to leave. I am placing you under arrest for the
01:57:20
murder of Linda Curry. My name is Yvonne Schou. My middle name is Marie. Finally, 16 years after
01:57:27
Linda's death, Paul Curry is called to account for her murder. What I need you to do is stand up and turn around. It
01:57:34
felt great to pull out my badge and ID and introduce myself to him. And tell him I was from Orange County
01:57:42
and I was there to arrest him. It felt great. Put both your hands behind your back.
01:57:49
But the arrest is just the beginning. Baytieh still has a case full of holes. Even up to today, there's no smoking
01:57:59
gun. Or smoking syringe. Or smoking anything. He was a monster. A monster who picked his prey, and that
01:58:20
was my best friend, Linda. >> [music] >> He is a liar. How can you live with yourself taking
01:58:30
this beautiful, beautiful woman and setting her up to die? >> [snorts] >> In this courtroom sits a vicious,
01:58:39
cold-blooded murderer. Make no mistake about that. It took 20 years, but in September 2014,
01:58:52
Assistant District Attorney Baytieh finally has Paul Curry right where he wants him. He thought he's smarter than
01:59:00
everybody else. In front of a jury on trial for the murder of his wife Linda. She died from nicotine poisoning.
01:59:11
Bayti admits the case is no slam dunk. My obligation is to prove it to you beyond a reasonable doubt.
01:59:18
You're never going to hear about how exactly Linda Curry died. Defense attorney Lisa Koppelman wastes no time
01:59:27
pointing out the lack of direct evidence connecting Paul Curry to the murder of his wife.
01:59:33
>> [music] >> You're never going to hear where the nicotine came from, how it got into her.
01:59:39
This is a case based on suspicion, innuendo, and conjecture. Curry is charged with first-degree murder for
01:59:47
financial gain, which carries a mandatory life sentence with no possibility of parole. This defendant is
01:59:55
as guilty as sin. No surprise, the defense sees things differently. He is an innocent man.
02:00:04
The prosecutor uses the word murderer, murderer, murderer. Koppelman belittles the case against Curry, questioning
02:00:12
those hospital IV bags that appeared to have been tampered with. Come on, this is baloney. There was no poison ever
02:00:22
found in any of those IV bags. There was no fingerprints on it. Instead, she tells the jury that Linda had a history
02:00:28
of stomach problems dating back to the late '60s, long before she met Paul. Throughout those years,
02:00:36
she'd gone to many, many doctors. All that history is not going to create nicotine in her
02:00:41
system out of nowhere. The defense argues that Linda was so desperate for a cure that she gave herself an unorthodox
02:00:50
remedy, a nicotine enema, and it wound up killing her. One way it got in there is this, through her colon,
02:01:00
from a nicotine enema. Bayti can barely contain himself. It's the enema defense.
02:01:07
It's the enema defense. There is no evidence Linda ever gave herself an enema, Bayti says, and even if there
02:01:14
was, it would not explain the undisputed toxic levels of Ambien in Linda's system. Where did the Ambien come from?
02:01:24
You know where it came from? Let me show you. Follow my finger. Right there. That
02:01:28
murderer sitting right there. Do you have any evidence he obtained Ambien? Did he have a prescription? Did
02:01:35
she have a prescription? The answer to your question is no, no, no, no. The only pertinent fact, Bayti says, is that
02:01:43
Linda died that June night within 30 minutes of getting that one lethal dose of nicotine, and that Paul Curry was the
02:01:52
only person who could have administered it. Nobody other than this defendant had
02:01:58
access to Linda in the 6 hours before her murder. Nobody. The defendant had all the motive in the
02:02:03
world to murder her. All of it. All of it. He had to cash that check. He had to cash the check.
02:02:11
She had to die. Paul Curry never takes the stand to explain himself, but Bayti has a
02:02:17
surprise in store. One of the better witnesses that I had is the one that I wasn't able to get to take the stand,
02:02:25
Paul Curry. Because the day after I signed that piece of paper to get him arrested, he
02:02:30
talks to his current wife then. He's on the phone telling her about what he thinks about our evidence. I'm in big
02:02:37
trouble. I I tell you, it it looks bad. I mean, other than the fact that there's
02:02:41
no physical evidence that I did it. I didn't do it. They could put me away to prison. They're serious about this. With
02:02:47
Paul's own words ringing in their ears, jurors get the case. For me, when a jury
02:02:53
starts deliberating, this is when I realize there is nothing else that I could do.
02:02:58
>> [music] >> Jurors deliberate for a day and a half before reaching a verdict. Sergeant
02:03:04
Yvonne Scholl, who brought the Curry case back to life in 2002, heads back to the courthouse. Either
02:03:12
guilty or not guilty. I didn't think it was going to hang. I watched the jury come in,
02:03:17
>> [music] >> and they wouldn't look at me. Where previously they would look at me. And so
02:03:22
I was afraid. I was holding one of Linda's earrings, and our other good friend was next to
02:03:28
me, and I gave her one of Linda's earrings, and we just held hands and held her earrings in our hands.
02:03:37
We, the jury in the above-entitled action, find the defendant, Paul Curry, guilty of the crime of murder, first
02:03:44
degree. Guilty of murder for financial gain. For those on Linda's side, the jury's
02:03:53
verdict brings sweet relief. What did you feel? Peace. I wish it was 20 years earlier,
02:04:02
cuz he got to enjoy 16 years of freedom. But even the guilty verdict does not answer the ultimate question,
02:04:11
why did Linda stay with Paul? She didn't want to admit failure. After you've waited that long, and
02:04:20
you've gone out with that many men, you don't want to admit that you chose the wrong guy.
02:04:29
>> [bell] [music] >> They're really hard to look at because they remind me of my best friend that I
02:04:36
lost. If you could go back, would you do something differently? Oh, if I could go
02:04:46
back, yeah. >> [snorts] >> I'd have to just bodily take her out of the house. I miss her so much.
02:04:59
I'll see her again. I'll see her again. 48 hours to miss it would be a crime. Were you [music] at all prepared for
02:05:13
what happened in this case? >> [music] [music] [music] [music]