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[Music] This wasn't just a crime scene, was it? No, it was not. This one was bad. Two innocent people that were on
00:00:23
their first date had their lives destroyed. For what reason? How well did Leslie Reeves know Chris
00:00:35
Smith first date? Chris was in a band and a singer and they had connected and he
00:00:44
asked her out. The night before Thanksgiving they decided just to meet up and go to the
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bar. He lived 65 miles away in a really small farming community. The bar that night was very busy. The
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place was packed wallto-wall. Chris and Leslie were talking a lot, laughing, getting along
00:01:08
with everyone around them. She texted me around 10:00 and she said, "Everything's
00:01:13
going okay." She did then text a second text that said, "I feel like something's
00:01:19
a little bit off or something. I'm not sure what she meant." Was that text the last time you heard from Leslie Reeves?
00:01:27
Mhm. Yes, it was. [Music] Did you try texting her in the morning? Mhm. And did she respond? No.
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I just started driving towards Farmersville cuz I had the address and called the police department in that
00:01:47
area. Montgomery County Sheriff's Office. This is Jeff. Hi. I'm gravely concerned about my friends. Can someone
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do a welfare check? What are you feeling at this point? Nana, a lot of anxiety because I don't know what I'm going to
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walk into uh going up there to this house. I pulled up in front of the address and then who came while you're
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sitting there? While I'm sitting there, uh who's this uh woman parked? I said, "Well, maybe I'll roll
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my window down and talk to her." I asked her if she was checking on Chris. And she said she was checking on her friend.
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And that's when I went up to the door. I saw the back door was broken. And then I saw Chris laying there. And
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then I ran back to my car and called 911. Nobody's answering the door. And and the back window shattered. And
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there's a body. And there's a foot I saw on the floor. I'm only 16. I can't deal with this.
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I was in shock. I think sheriff's office. Jeff. Jeff, give me some help. I got one alive and one dead.
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I just remember them bringing Chris out on the stretcher to the ambulance. I remember there being a sheet over him.
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So, it made me panic a little bit. I got a call from our command center in Springfield.
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So, you are the lead crime scene investigator? Yes. Were you really prepared for what you faced when you
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walked into that house? I was not. Why would somebody do this to him? Why would they try to hurt my baby? That's
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all I kept thinking. He's my baby. Someone hurt him. Going on a first date and they both end up getting shot is
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insane. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] On the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day
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2021, Nanette Styber sat in her car and watched anxiously as EMTs and Montgomery
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County Sheriff's deputies descended on a house in the tiny village of Farmersville, Illinois.
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I was quite upset and kind of going crazy in the car. Nette had been unable to reach her
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good friend Leslie Reeves. Nanette knew Leslie had gone to that house the night before to go on a
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first date with Chris Smith, a man she had met online. She was very excited. She thought, "Oh, this will this might
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be um a really good connection." But now Nette was worried. She'd seen Chris get taken away in an ambulance,
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but there was no sign of Leslie. I kept hoping, you know, okay, bring Leslie out, please.
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Finally, a detective approached and asked Nette for a photo of Leslie. She showed him her phone and he gave her the
00:05:32
horrible news. I'm so sorry to have to tell you this. Your friend has um been murdered, you know, shot. He
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said he didn't tell me where, but he did say, "I want you to know that she went very quickly."
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EMTs have found Chris barely conscious and unable to say anything about the shooting. They rushed him to the
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hospital and deputies searched the house. Later that day, crime scene investigator Josh Eastston of the
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Illinois State Police was called to the scene and he began cataloging the mayhem
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inside. What do you see when you first approached the door? I noticed the side door of the house, the glass in the door
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has been broken out. The refrigerator was pulled away from the wall. The kitchen table was pushed. The the chairs
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were knocked over. No weapon was found, leading investigators to suspect that a third person was involved. Een took note
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of every detail, including the burnt pizza in the oven. I assume that maybe they were cooking a pizza for the night
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and the suspect shows up at the door. They both tried to fight him off and when Chris was shot, Leslie went to the
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living room to try to hide. How many times was she shot? She was only shot one time in the head. In the head.
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Leslie's body was in the living room while Chris had been found in the kitchen. Een said of the
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1,800 crime scenes he had been to, this was one of the most horrific. There was blood everywhere, the cabinets, the
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refrigerator, the countertop. There was blood from corner to corner in the kitchen.
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Eastston spotted two silver colored bullet casings from a 9 mm gun, one in the kitchen and the other near Leslie's
00:07:38
body. As Eastston processed the scene, detectives began learning about the victims. Chris Smith was a 48-year-old
00:07:49
divorced father who worked for a pool contractor. Chris was a nice guy. He would hang out here frequently, was
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friends with most people in town. Everybody knew him. Bartender Dena Lrand says Chris was well known in town as the
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guy who grew banana trees and giant pumpkins. I remember one Halloween he donated hundreds of pumpkins for
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decorations for any of the kids to paint. He gave back to his community. Did either one of you ever worry about
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Chris? No. No. Sharon Castanza is Chris's mother, Ashley Hulcom. his sister. Chris is a
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stayhome person that literally would just work in his backyard. Chris lived with a dog named Tiki. And
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an EMT told the family that Tiki may have helped Chris make it through the night by huddling with him for the
00:08:50
roughly 12 hours that Chris was bleeding before being rescued. I think Tikki protected Chris. I think she probably
00:08:59
laid right next to him. Chris's close-knit family could not imagine anyone wanting to kill him. It
00:09:07
was like, "No way. How? Why? Like, who?" Yeah. Who would have done that? Investigators had the same questions
00:09:17
about Leslie and learned that she was a divorced mother of two children who lived in Troy, about an hour south of
00:09:25
Farmersville. Although Leslie had a master's degree in engineering, she chose instead to teach
00:09:32
Pilates and to promote self-defense classes for women. Hi, I'm Leslie from All You Studio and Leslie posted this
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video to her YouTube channel to advertise one of her classes. Empower yourself against aggression and assault
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as we teach you easy to learn self-defense techniques. Power up. Leslie tried to help women in abusive
00:09:56
relationships, but friends say she had her own troubles. Nanette told deputies she was worried about a former
00:10:03
boyfriend, a contractor by the name of Robert Tar known as Bobby. She said, "I am going to completely block Bobby from
00:10:12
email, texts, phone calls. I I have to go no contact." Later that evening, news of Leslie's
00:10:20
murder began circulating and reached another close friend, Amy Steinhower. She had met Tar, a divorced father of
00:10:29
three, and did not have a good impression of him. But you never see someone and think that they can kill my
00:10:36
friend. Amy called the sheriff's office that night to give them Tar's name. By then, detectives had already set out
00:10:48
to find Bobby Tar. While 85 miles to the north, surgeons were fighting to try to
00:10:55
save the life of Chris Smith. A bullet still lodged in his brain. [Music] I just wanted to get there. I just
00:11:22
wanted to get there as fast as I could. After learning that Chris had been shot in the head, his family rushed to the
00:11:28
hospital in Springfield, Illinois, 2 hours from their home, I was on the phone to everyone I could think of cuz I
00:11:36
just needed prayers from everybody. Doctors removed part of Chris's skull and some bullet fragments in his brain
00:11:44
before putting him in a medically induced coma. His family, struggling to piece together what had happened,
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learned that he had been out with a woman named Leslie Reeves. Had you ever heard the name Leslie Reeves before? No.
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I looked her up and then I tried to reach out to her friends and then I found my best friend Nanette. Nanette
00:12:05
told them the same thing she had told investigators. She suspected Leslie's ex-boyfriend, Bobby
00:12:13
Tar. That night, sheriff's deputies went to Tar's home in Collinsville, an hour south of the crime scene. Authorities
00:12:22
say he never asked why they wanted to talk to him, and he agreed to go to the police station without a lawyer. T
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Margaret. Although her friend said the couple had broken up, Tar told investigators that he and Leslie were
00:12:38
still together. You and Leslie have a lot of problems. I would say no worse than any
00:12:45
average couple. It was Leslie that detectives wanted to talk about. I want you to to dig down deep here and be as
00:12:54
honest with me as you can. Okay. Um Leslie is dead. What? Can you help me shed some light on
00:13:04
this? How did she die? She was murdered. What happened? That's why we're here with
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you. You help me believe that you're not involved in this. I'm not involved in anything. Investigators asked Tar about
00:13:21
Farmersville, the scene of the crime. You know what Farmersville is? Farmersville.
00:13:28
No, I can't say I do. I've never been there. I've never heard of it. And they asked Tar where he had been the night
00:13:34
before Thanksgiving. I went to a buddy of mine's house. He left and left me some money
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out of his shop and I had to go pick it up. The friend lived a short distance from Tar's home. Remember what time you
00:13:48
came back? Yeah, it wasn't that long. um maybe 6:30ish, something like that. Investigators believe the shooting took
00:14:01
place sometime early on Thanksgiving morning after 1:00 a.m. Tar said after he got back, he was home all night. You
00:14:10
can talk to my daughter about me being home. That's exactly what they did. Detectives brought Tar's 17-year-old
00:14:18
daughter, Shelby, to a different room at the police station, and she told them that her father actually left home twice
00:14:27
that night. So, first time he left was roughly 6:30, right? And then he he came home about a half hour later. They said
00:14:35
he had to go back, right? And then it was 9:15ish when he got back home. Yeah. Shelby said he had been gone for more
00:14:42
than 2 hours. And when he got home, he was upset. He gets home, he was crying. He was sobbing. He said he missed
00:14:50
Leslie. Shelby said she went to sleep around 9:30 and was awakened by her father around 2:45 a.m. He started
00:14:59
laundry. He was pacing, walking around, and he was like, "I can't sleep." Detectives went back to Tar and told him
00:15:06
Shelby's story did not match his. Tar then changed his story and said he had gone to his friend's house twice, but
00:15:16
still insisted he was home by 8. As Tar sat at the police station, detectives searched his house and found his phone
00:15:25
and a Glock pistol. Shelby had told them her father had a different gun, but they
00:15:31
didn't find it. It's little. It's like this big. I like the light green, but like the army green. Shelby told
00:15:39
investigators she had seen it the day before Thanksgiving in her father's sock drawer yesterday morning. Actually, I
00:15:47
think it's so soft and it was there. No, it's not. Was there yesterday and gone today? Okay. Bobby Tar sat at the police
00:15:55
station overnight while authorities continued to investigate. They had already learned that his car had been
00:16:01
captured by license plate reader cameras. Just after midnight, the night of the shooting, the cameras were near a
00:16:09
gas station, and investigators discovered that Tar had bought gas there just after midnight. Back at the police
00:16:17
station, they confronted him with a gas station receipt. So, you're a liar? Cuz I don't remember doing it. You don't
00:16:25
remember being out after midnight when you have told us you are 100% positive? The gas station is here in Troy. Yes.
00:16:36
And the murder occurred here in Farmersville. Correct. The gas station was near Tar's home, an hour from the
00:16:45
crime scene. Andrew Affronty is the Montgomery County States attorney. He has donia, a condition that causes
00:16:53
muscle ticks and tremors. So why is it significant? Cuz it So he went out and got some gas. It was significant to us
00:17:01
cuz why would he lie about it? wanted that fuel. What does that prove? Investigators believed it was proof Tar
00:17:08
was lying about his whereabouts that night. They placed him under arrest. You're under arrest for murder.
00:17:20
A fronti says they arrested Tar immediately because they feared Chris's life was in
00:17:27
danger and they hadn't found the murder weapon. if he was out of custody, could he take further steps to dispose of the
00:17:36
evidence? Just one day after Leslie Reeves was killed and Chris Smith was left fighting
00:17:43
for his life, investigators believe they had the man responsible in custody. I'm
00:17:49
Aaron Morardi. Bobby Tar. But in his only media interview, Bobby [ __ ] tells 48 hours they got the wrong guy. There
00:17:59
is so many things untold that will prove my innocence. Bobby Tar charged with the
00:18:19
murder of Leslie Reeves and the attempted murder of Chris Smith is nothing if not unflapable. Did you kill
00:18:27
Leslie Reeves? No. Did you shoot Chris Smith? No. He kept his cool even when confronted with a litany of lies he told
00:18:37
investigators. You told the police you only left the house once. That wasn't true. Correct. You told the
00:18:45
police you had no idea where Farmersville is. That was a lie. Mhm. You lied about getting gas in your car
00:18:54
that night. Mhm. When he spoke with us, Tara admitted he was at Christmas house the night before Thanksgiving, placing
00:19:03
himself at the scene of the crime. He says the night began when he met Leslie at her part-time job at this loft store.
00:19:11
She had said she was going to go meet some friends because one of their friends was playing in a band. and she
00:19:18
asked me if I wanted to go. I said, "Well, you know, I would go, but I have my youngest daughter staying with me for
00:19:24
a week." Tar says that when he declined the invitation, Leslie asked if he would
00:19:29
follow her to Farmersville because her van was unreliable. And so he did. That makes no sense to Leslie's friend Amy
00:19:38
Steinhower. She was terrified of him and rightfully so. Just a few weeks earlier, Amy says
00:19:47
Leslie told her that Tar had shown up while she was on a first date with a different guy. After that incident,
00:19:54
Leslie told Amy she was frightened by Tar and texted Amy. I could be killed by him someday if I don't cut all contact.
00:20:03
So, you're telling me now that this woman who was scared of you, who had actually texted a friend that she
00:20:10
thought you might kill her, asked you to follow her to another man's house? Mhm.
00:20:17
Does that make any sense? No, I understand. Um, so I don't understand that text in general. Why did she think
00:20:24
you might kill her? I don't know. I've got no clue. Tar says Leslie lied to her friends
00:20:32
about their relationship. He insists she asked him to follow her north to Farmersville. So I went with her up
00:20:40
there. I think we arrived there around 7:30. I parked in front of her van in front of his house. That's as far as I
00:20:48
went. I left. I never went back to Farmersville again. If he had an innocent explanation for
00:20:55
why he was in Farmersville, why did he lie to detectives? My daughter, her and Leslie, there was a little bit of
00:21:02
tension between both them. I did not want her to know that I was going to meet Leslie that night. Tar claims that
00:21:09
after he lied to his daughter Shelby about seeing Leslie, he stuck to that lie at the police station because he was
00:21:17
afraid they would tell her. And he never corrected those lies, even when detectives arrested him. Why not just
00:21:26
say, "Look, between you and me, I lied to my daughter, so let me tell you the truth, but let's just not share that
00:21:33
with her." Why wouldn't you do that? I should have done it. He's quick to point out the lack of physical evidence
00:21:40
connecting him to the bloody crime scene. Investigators searched his white Jetta, but did not find any shards of
00:21:48
glass or blood stains. Two tests by the state police were done on my car. Zero blood found in my car. There's zero DNA
00:21:59
of mine at the crime scene. Anything from the crime scene in my car or on me or any of my clothing or my
00:22:09
shoes. Zero. Prosecutor affronty has to concede that point. Was any of Ty's DNA found inside
00:22:18
the house? No. Were any of his fingerprints found inside the house? No. And authorities still had not found the
00:22:28
murder weapon. But a week after the shooting, they got a phone call from Tar's friend, Billy Adams. Adams said T
00:22:36
called him from jail. That call was recorded. What's your day look like today? Cuz I need 10 minutes of your
00:22:42
time. Tar asked Adams to go to his house and look for some deck brackets. I got some special aluminum brackets and that
00:22:53
I need you to get because they're for another job that I didn't tell dad about yet. So, don't say
00:22:59
nothing to him. Instead, Adams contacted the sheriff's office. Deputies suspected
00:23:06
Tar knew the phone call was being recorded and was speaking to his friend in code about something other than deck
00:23:14
brackets. Yeah, get them and get rid of them. They thought that was suspicious, which was
00:23:20
why they went over and searched. Investigators were on their hands and knees in Tar's yard looking for a gun.
00:23:28
Dan Folultz is Tar's defense attorney. They searched that area thoroughly. No gun. You know what? They did find deck
00:23:38
brackets. A few days later, they got another phone call, this time from Tar's brother, asking them to come back to the
00:23:48
house. Tar's family gave deputies a Ziploc bag they said they had found in the same yard that had been searched
00:23:56
just days earlier. Inside a Springfield Hellcat 9 mm pistol and silvercoled ammunition. The Illinois State Police
00:24:08
determined the gun was the murder weapon and the ammunition matched the casings found at the crime scene. We still to
00:24:16
this day don't know how that ended up there specifically in the spot that they searched. Are you saying you were set
00:24:24
up? Someone was framing you? Yes. But if someone was framing Tar, he or she would have to be pretty
00:24:34
detailoriented, the state police say Tar's fingerprint was on the Ziploc bag. He is adamant that he would not have
00:24:42
been dumb enough that he would have carried it all the way back to his home and said, "Hm, where would I put this
00:24:50
gun on my 1 acre lot? I think I'll put it next to the front door." And Tar points out neither his prints nor DNA
00:24:59
were found on the gun itself. Nothing on the firearm. No DNA, no prints of mine on the firearm. What I think what
00:25:07
happened is is that the gun was clicked and then Mr. Tar just missed a spot. That spot was Leslie's DNA, say police
00:25:15
found on the guide rod of the gun. Tar's explanation, the gun wasn't his. It belonged to Leslie. I purchased the
00:25:25
Hellcat and Leslie purchased it from me. As investigators continued to build a case against Bobby Tar, they say he was
00:25:34
hatching a plan to silence the only eyewitness. Did you ask a inmate to shoot Chris Smith?
00:25:47
What do you make of Bobby Tar's story? Chat now with the 48 Hours team on Facebook and
00:25:56
[Music] X. Leslie accompanied me here on several occasions. If there's anyone who knew
00:26:11
what guns Leslie Reeves owned, it's Howard Bolton, her close friend and firearm instructor. When I would hold
00:26:19
classes, she would actually shoot with us. Leslie was becoming a very good shot. Bolton says Leslie had organized a
00:26:27
class called Girls with Guns not long before she was murdered. We put the girls through their paces. They would
00:26:35
move and fire. They would go forward and fire. They would come back and fire. And
00:26:40
Leslie did very, very well at that. Bobby Tar insisted to us that Leslie owned the Hellcat that was used to kill
00:26:47
her, but Howard says he never saw her use it. Leslie never brought a Springfield, let alone a Hellcat, to
00:26:56
class. So then, how did Leslie's DNA get on the guide rod of the murder weapon? Howard believes that Leslie's DNA could
00:27:05
only be on that guide rod if the gun was fired at her at close range. So when he
00:27:11
shot her, wherever it was he shot her would have contaminated that part of the gun. In fact, Howard says Leslie owned a
00:27:21
different gun. Her friends say they wish she had taken it with her the night she
00:27:26
was killed. Had Leslie taken the gun with her, I assure you the outcome would have been different.
00:27:34
Tar declared his innocence, but the case against him could hinge on what Chris Smith, the only survivor, remembers.
00:27:43
Would he be able to identify him? That was the question. As Chris remained in a coma, we were talking to him, singing to
00:27:51
him, and I was always holding his hand. Hallelu. While Chris Smith lay helpless,
00:28:00
authorities say Tar was plotting to silence him forever. A grand jury indicted Tar on
00:28:08
two counts of solicitation of murder. Those charges are based on allegations by an inmate who says Tar paid him
00:28:17
$10,000 to shoot and kill the lead detective. And Chris, did you ask a inmate to shoot Chris Smith? No, ma'am.
00:28:29
And to kill Detective Roach? No, ma'am. Tar says the alleged plot was a lie concocted by a former cellmate. Tar says
00:28:40
he loaned that cellmate $10,000 for his bond and that it had nothing to do with Chris Smith. Were you worried he was
00:28:49
going to testify and point to you as a shooter? No, I was not worried one iota. The truth was that no one knew what
00:28:58
Chris Smith remembered. The first time he regained consciousness was in early January
00:29:04
2022, about 2 months after the shooting. Like eggs. Egg young. Chris's voice was
00:29:13
so weak in those early days. It's already done over there. That is old friend Mark Rearen, a talk show host in
00:29:20
St. Louis. 522 971 FM talk barely recognized Chris on the phone. I could not believe that I was hearing from this
00:29:29
guy and I cried. He cried. Just talking about that moment really brings me chills because I just thought he was
00:29:38
never going to be someone that was in my life ever again. What did Chris tell you? Well, when Chris came on of this, I
00:29:44
was pretty sensitive to ask him about what had happened that night because I think I was a little afraid of even
00:29:50
having those conversations. So, most of the conversations that we had were really focused on, hey, how are you? Are
00:29:55
you going to be okay? After intense physical therapy, he's made incredible strides. He's much stronger than when he
00:30:03
awoke from a coma, but he discovered there are gaps in his memory. What does he remember from that terrible
00:30:12
night? I wish to God I could remember something. I mean, even just a smidgen of something, but I remember nothing. He
00:30:21
remembers nothing of the shooting or Leslie Reeves. I said, "Who the heck's Lesie? I don't know Leslie." You had no
00:30:30
idea. No, nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Is Chris the same person who used to come on your show before he was shot? Yeah. I
00:30:38
think at the core, he's still the same guy that I knew. He's still the smartass. He's still the guy that's
00:30:44
going to talk about how good he is and how good he was and how much he could lift weights.
00:30:50
Chris works out at the gym most mornings trying to regain muscle so that someday
00:30:55
he'll be able to walk without assistance. Straight curve. He's even back to being the lead singer
00:31:04
in his rock and roll band. I don't know how he did make it. I don't understand how he did. He's a miracle.
00:31:13
But Chris is aware his life is very different from what it once was. So, I'm half the man I used to be, but I'm
00:31:21
trying to get it back as hard as I can. And then my left leg is uh partially paralyzed from my hip to my knee, then
00:31:27
from my knee to my toes, completely paralyzed. So, if there's any neurosurgeons out there, any researchers
00:31:33
out there, please get a hold of me. I'll be your guinea pig. Just make me normal
00:31:36
and give my life back, please. It's tough, isn't it, Chris? It's tough. Doesn't even describe it.
00:31:44
Doesn't even describe it. Chris is resigned to living with part of that hollow point bullet in his brain.
00:31:51
Doctors say it's in a spot that makes it too dangerous to remove. So, that's where you got shot? Yep.
00:31:58
Right here. There's a Yep. You still feel it in my skull? Right there. After decades on his own, Chris had to move
00:32:06
back into his mother's house. I thank my blessings daily that he's here with us.
00:32:13
I just wish that this guy didn't take everything away from him. Chris visits with his loyal dog, Tikki, but no longer
00:32:20
lives with her. And he'd love to see his 12-year-old daughter more often, but he
00:32:25
can't drive, and he's living in St. Louis, almost 2 hours away from his daughter and ex-wife. I miss her. She
00:32:33
was my little pee in the pod. I mean, we did everything together. The trial of Robert Tar was set for
00:32:40
April 2024, but Chris would not be there. He told the prosecutor he was too angry to attend. You didn't think you'd
00:32:48
be able to just sit there. Oh, no. No way. I I know myself. I There's no way. No. But Chris's alleged shooter, Bobby
00:32:55
Tar, will be there. and he said he was eager to tell the jury that he's not a violent man. But on this one night early
00:33:06
morning, did you snap? No, that's not my nature. I don't lose it and snap. Follow along with Chris's remarkable
00:33:18
story at 48 hours.com. [Music] When Bobby Tar went on trial in April 2024, prosecutors told the jury that he
00:33:36
killed Leslie Reeves rather than allow her to live the life she wanted, a life without him. Mr. Tar couldn't deal with
00:33:45
the fact that Leslie was seeing somebody else and he had to go and take care of it.
00:33:51
Andrew Aphrante says Tar secretly followed Leslie to Farmersville early that evening and shortly afterwards his
00:34:00
phone began showing some interesting activity. He had actually searched Chris Smith on his phone. It tried to find his
00:34:08
Facebook profile. Tar headed home and texted his friend Billy Adams. I don't feel like she would drive that far for a
00:34:17
party or go out with a girlfriend. I think it's for a dude. He also searched whether police could track his phone if
00:34:26
he was using a VPN, a virtual private network. He was researching to determine whether
00:34:33
or not that would mask where his location was while he was using the phone. Authorities say around midnight,
00:34:41
Tar left home, stopping at that gas station. And then according to a fronti surveillance videos and cell tower
00:34:49
records show that tar drove back to Farmersville. You believe he intended to kill both Chris and Leslie? I 100%
00:35:00
believe that he went up there with the intent to do serious harm to both of them. With one victim dead and the other
00:35:09
with no memory, it's difficult to say with certainty what happened, but the prosecution argued that sometime after
00:35:17
1:00 a.m., Bobby Tar tried to enter through the back door of Christmas house. Leslie and Chris tried to keep
00:35:26
him out. There was some kind of altercation or struggle, and that's when the glass was
00:35:33
broken. Crime scene investigator Josh Eastston told the jury what he had observed
00:35:40
inside the kitchen. The refrigerator was pulled away from the wall where it appeared it normally was. Prosecutors
00:35:47
believe Leslie was trying to use the refrigerator to block the door. And based on where Chris was shot in his
00:35:55
head, they think he was crouching down to help Leslie. I think that while Chris was crouched
00:36:04
down trying to hold the door shut, Bobby shot through the door and struck Chris.
00:36:08
With Chris incapacitated, Aphrante says Leslie hid in the living room. Tar tracked her down, shot, and killed her.
00:36:18
I strongly believe that he walked in and executed her. Defense attorney Dan Folz
00:36:24
disputes all of that. There is simply no evidence that that's what happened. There's no evidence that Leslie pushed
00:36:31
the refrigerator. There's no fingerprints and blood on the refrigerator of Leslie's. Folult says
00:36:36
evidence of a fight in the kitchen tells a different story. The amount of blood in that kitchen was astonishing. From
00:36:45
looking at that crime scene, do you believe that Christopher Smith had to fight his his asalent in the kitchen? It
00:36:55
would appear to me that there was some significant struggle in that kitchen between him and someone else. And he
00:37:01
says the asalent could not have been Bobby Tar because he would have been covered in blood. They did not identify
00:37:10
a single piece of DNA in his car. They didn't identify a bloody fingerprint. They did not identify anything tying him
00:37:19
to that crime scene. But prosecutors argued the house wasn't bloody when Tar left. They said Chris bled heavily in
00:37:27
the 12 hours it took for help to arrive. And while the prosecution did not have a
00:37:33
lot of forensic evidence linking Tar to the crime scene, a fronti says his phone
00:37:39
activity, his lies to investigators, and the evidence found on the Hellcat all prove his guilt. When you put all of
00:37:47
that together, that's when you get the clear picture of what happened. When it was the defense's turn, Tar says he
00:37:54
wanted to tell his story to the jury, but he chose not to testify. Why didn't you just decide you
00:38:02
were going to talk to the jury and tell this story if in fact you have a story to tell? I should have. I very well
00:38:10
should have. We made a strategic decision because it may have opened the door for a whole lot
00:38:16
of other more damaging evidence to be used uh to cross-examine him. The defense didn't put on any witnesses and
00:38:24
counted on the jury to find reasonable doubt in the lack of physical evidence. After 3 hours, the jury found
00:38:35
Bobby Tar guilty of firstdegree murder and attempted murder. Everyone clapped and Bobby just sat there shaking his
00:38:43
head. Two months later, Tar was back in court for sentencing and this time so was
00:38:51
Chris to tell the judge how the shooting impacted him and his family. Cameras were not allowed in the courtroom.
00:39:00
Lost my house, lost my truck. I've literally lost my life without being killed. Tar also spoke and denied shooting
00:39:09
Leslie and Chris. The judge sentenced him to 85 years. I hope the rest of his time on this earth is hell.
00:39:19
[Music] Leslie Reeves friends are focused on keeping her memory alive. She was a
00:39:28
light of a lot of people's lives. She was always smiling. She was a very good mother.
00:39:35
lived for her kids and was an advocate and champion of women, women's rights, and especially women that were abused.
00:39:46
If it can happen to her, it could happen to anyone. So, we all need to be careful. Chris Smith says he never
00:39:54
expected he'd be a victim of domestic violence and cautions other men to take a hard look at their behavior. If guys,
00:40:03
you feel like that you want you want to hurt a woman, get help. While Chris mourns his old life, he's
00:40:12
writing a book about his experiences and says he's working to make what he calls
00:40:18
poor man's margaritas out of the lemons and limes he's been handed. I've got a doover. Good Lord, give me a doover. Not
00:40:27
many people get a second chance in life. Chris has found love with Michelle Alrech. She's an angel. Loving me and
00:40:35
accepting me the way that I am. He proposed to her on stage. I just asked her if she'd marry me. Guys,
00:40:43
what's the most important lesson out of all of this? Don't ever give up on anything. Ever. No matter how bad things
00:40:51
are, don't ever give up. [Music] As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to
00:41:09
watch. It was called Candyman. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder?
00:41:16
Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Eron
00:41:21
Morardi of 48 hours. And of all the cases I've covered, this is the one that troubles me most. Listen to Murder in
00:41:30
the Orange Grove, the troubled case against Crosley Green. Wherever you get your
00:41:35
[Music] podcasts, there's a saying here in Minnesota, Minnesota nice. And that Minnesota nice only goes so far. And
00:41:51
Heidi Fergus, she went all away. She was genuine and she loved deep. She definitely lived a life of love. That
00:42:00
was the mark that she left. And that's hard to let go. You know, this is a a terrible, terrible
00:42:09
incident. You know, we're hoping to find other physical evidence that might help
00:42:12
us lead us in a direction toward a suspect. The morning of April 25th, 2010, at 6:30 a.m., Heidi Fergus calls
00:42:22
911. Someone's trying to break into my home. She tells the state patrol dispatcher that someone is trying to
00:42:29
break into her house and she's trying to give her address. 1794 Mini Haha Avenue. While she's on
00:42:36
the phone, you can hear a loud noise and the phone goes dead. Well, I don't know where she went there.
00:42:44
Approximately a minute later, Nicholas Fergus calls 911, says that he and his wife have both been shot.
00:42:55
Okay. Are you in St. Paul, sir? St. Paul fire paramedics took Nick out to the ambulance and transported him to
00:43:01
Regent's Hospital. He had been shot in the leg. Heidi was struck in the back as she was trying to flee towards the
00:43:07
kitchen. It was a shotgun blast that killed her right away. The shotgun was laying inside the front door area.
00:43:15
There's a little foyer. Nick gave a brief story. He heard somebody fiddling around with the door
00:43:22
and that he then armed himself with a shotgun and that Nick and the intruder struggled over the shotgun. The
00:43:28
responding officers uh went up and down the block trying to talk to neighbors. I was next door housesitting when the
00:43:35
crime happened. Really, all I heard was kind of this agonizing yell of, "You shot her. You shot me."
00:43:46
It never felt right. The story never made sense to me. He tells investigators that he grabbed a shotgun, loaded it
00:43:55
with two shells, and then proceeded to have Heidi go down the stairs in front of him towards the very door that this
00:44:02
alleged burglar was at. Why you would send the unarmed person down in front of you is beyond me. To me, there were only
00:44:10
two people in that house when Heidi was killed. And they were Nick and Heidi. In order to believe that Nick
00:44:20
killed Heidi, you have to believe that a good man with no history of violence killed the woman that he loved more than
00:44:26
anything in life for no reason. That's what you have to believe. We can't get there.
00:44:37
[Music] [Music] Well, this area of St. Paul where Heidi and Nick Fus lived I would characterize as generally
00:45:28
a quiet neighborhood. Back in 2010, 9 years before she took charge of the Furus case, Detective
00:45:36
Nicole Cypes of the St. Paul Police Department was a patrol cop who worked this neighborhood. Do you remember first
00:45:43
hearing about the Fergus case? I do. Okay. It was early on a Sunday morning. The 911 call was at 6:30. Nick Fergus's
00:45:57
story of a burglar didn't make sense to Cypes. Most people are home at 6:30 on a
00:46:02
Sunday morning, especially in a family neighborhood like that. The last thing that most burglars want to encounter are
00:46:08
people. Did police ever have any luck tracking down the intruder that Nick described? No. You know, I'm looking. I
00:46:16
didn't see anybody come out of that house. Brandon O' Conor was housesitting next door to the Fcuses and taking care
00:46:24
of kittens. I was woken up by the kittens kind of walking around. Some noise caught my attention, so stuck my
00:46:31
head out the window, kind of listen. Brandon says he recalls hearing a muffled argument coming from the
00:46:39
Fergus's house, listening through an open window. That's when I ended up hearing what sounded like gunshots.
00:46:46
Around this time, Brandon said he also heard that voice crying out. Kind of this agonizing yell
00:46:55
of, "You shot her. You shot me. Uh, please, please, no." Something along those lines. And then then it was done.
00:47:06
First responders rushed to the scene. There was nothing they could do for Heidi. She was pronounced dead. Nick was
00:47:15
rushed to the hospital and treated for a gray gunshot wound to his leg. He seemed
00:47:20
not to be sure whether or not Heidi had been killed. Like I said, we'll do our best to find out how how Heidi's doing.
00:47:29
Hours later, Nick was transported to the St. Paul Police Department. Then Nick and I started to have our conversation
00:47:36
in the conference room. Sergeant Jim Gray took Nick's statement. You know, I know this is a very traumatic situation,
00:47:42
okay? and I'm just going to try and ease into it. Okay, so we'll go. Nick said the couple ordered in food the night
00:47:49
before and watched the movie Avatar. They went upstairs to their bedroom around 11:00 p.m. The next morning, Nick
00:47:58
got up around 6:00 a.m. to get a drink of water from the bathroom, go back to sleep, and just kind of fit fullfully
00:48:04
sleep for 10 or 15 minutes. And then I heard the screen door open. kind of let it go for a little while, but then I
00:48:11
started hearing filling with our doororknob. And is Heidi still sleeping then? Yeah. Okay. Like a rock. Nick said
00:48:19
he retrieved his shotgun from the closet. I keep two shells for it just in case things go weird. So when I heard
00:48:26
things this morning, I did load it and then I wake up Heidi. Okay. According to Nick, he told Heidi someone was trying
00:48:34
to break in and to call 911. as she spoke with the dispatcher. Someone's trying to break into my home. They
00:48:40
headed downstairs so they could get out of the house. What address are you at? All right. So, you going first down the
00:48:46
stairs or is she is she behind you or is she in front of you or what? Um, she's in front cuz I'm kind of trying to move
00:48:53
her along quickly. Nick said as they passed by the front door, it burst open. Guy that was there, I think he he
00:49:01
grabbed the barrel. I don't remember exactly what happened, but the gun went off. So my finger slipped onto the
00:49:07
trigger. Nick told Sergeant Gray during the struggle over the weapon. The gun fired.
00:49:14
Striking Heidi, who he said was in the kitchen. Okay. So the guns guns here, chest high. Yep. You and I are like
00:49:21
this. Yeah. And then the gun goes off. Mhm. I I mean I know it hit Heidi. I just I know it did. She was running
00:49:27
away, so it definitely hit her in the back. Hit her in the back. Yeah. I couldn't believe it. I I didn't want
00:49:36
to believe it. It can't be true. That's There's no way. Katina and Marcus Sarzen
00:49:42
mentored Heidi at Calvary Church. I think she's one of those uh people that you can't not like. Everyone liked
00:49:50
Heidi. She genuinely loved people. She was the life of the party. Always finding fun ways to engage people and u
00:50:00
she was very loyal. The couple met at the church and in 2005, Heidi, 20, and Nick, 22, got married. Nick Fergus had a
00:50:10
very warm and engaging personality, always smiling. He carried himself with confidence, and he had high
00:50:18
character, high integrity in the church. That was the reputation he'd built for himself. But just a few hours after
00:50:24
Heidi's death, Sergeant Jim Gray found himself questioning Nick Fergus's account. He couldn't figure out why the
00:50:32
couple would leave the safety of their bedroom. You come upstairs, you know, hate I hate to tell you this, but my
00:50:38
house, you know, I'm justified in killing you if you come break in my house. Yeah. And I guess Nick explained
00:50:44
that the couple had a plan in place. If they were ever in a precarious situation, they would avoid a
00:50:50
confrontation and escape to their car in the garage and get away. If we can save
00:50:55
ourselves, let's let's do that instead of getting into a situation where his story didn't make a lot of sense to me.
00:51:02
Sergeant Gray started probing into their marriage. You guys uh have any problems
00:51:07
or anything like that? Most just the normal stuff like um you know stresses about finances and quality time
00:51:17
and vacations, all that stuff. Yeah. But you guys aren't behind in the bills or anything like that. We have in the bills
00:51:25
um which is a little stressful. In fact, we were planning on moving tomorrow. Um
00:51:30
well, where? Well, we hadn't figured that out yet. We were and and this is a a hard it's a hard place for us. We were
00:51:39
foreclosing or we forclosed on our house. Nick revealed they were behind on their mortgage payments and just 24
00:51:47
hours away from being evicted from their home. Well, that's kind of I mean kind of close notice. It is. And I think the
00:51:55
reason is cuz we're both kind of dealing with the shape of the whole thing. Gray
00:51:58
says his suspicions were raised and minutes later he was struck by the way Nick asked about Heidi. Well, I just
00:52:06
want to know the final answer. The final answer on Heidi. She did make it. I figured that. I mean, is that
00:52:21
typically how someone asks if their loved one or spouse has been killed? Not only is that not typical that that's how
00:52:29
they'd ask it, but they wouldn't wait an hour and 40 minutes into this conversation to ask that question. I've
00:52:35
watched the interview obviously numerous times. And I understand people react to
00:52:40
trauma differently, but this was different than what I'd seen. Anybody that's watched
00:52:47
that interview cannot help but be struck by Nick's demeanor during it. And that demeanor was this was just another day.
00:52:54
This was something he had to get through. Skeptical of Nick's story, Sergeant Gray confronted Nick about what
00:53:01
happened that day. Nick, I you know, part of me wants to ask you this question. Did you have anything to do
00:53:07
with this? No, absolutely not. Okay. Absolutely not. All right. Why is there a party that wants to ask that? Well,
00:53:16
Nick, I'm I'm a police officer. Okay. I got to ask got to ask the tough questions. All right.
00:53:24
After the interview, Nick left the police station. That day, investigators returned to the Fergus home with a
00:53:32
search warrant. Gray says it did not look like anyone was planning to move out the next day. Nothing was packaged
00:53:39
up at all. The closet was still full of clothes. We noticed that there was still
00:53:43
food in the refrigerator. And there was something else that investigators questioned. We didn't see any signs of
00:53:50
forced entry into the house. Based off of the physical evidence at the scene, his version of the incident couldn't be
00:53:57
plausible. What do you think of Nick's story about the intruder? Chat now on Facebook and
00:54:05
X. 107 investigation. 48 hours after Nick Furus said an intruder shot and killed his wife Heidi,
00:54:21
police went back to the crime scene to check out his story. He told us that there was a life and death struggle
00:54:28
inside the house. But Sergeant Gray says the evidence at the crime scene didn't match Nick's account. There was a vase,
00:54:35
uh some receipts, a beer bottle, and none of that was knocked over. So, that kind of raised suspicion to us that if
00:54:41
there was such a struggle, why wasn't any of this stuff knocked over? Sergeant Gray says he examined the front door for
00:54:48
signs of a break-in and did notice some markings, but it wasn't anything new that would lead us to believe that uh
00:54:55
the door had been forced open the day of the murder. In his interview, Nick said
00:55:01
he heard someone fiddling with the front door from upstairs. And like, what are they doing? They just going like this?
00:55:08
Yeah, kind of like that. Yeah, just shaking the knob and shoving the door. That day, Sergeant Gray and his
00:55:15
colleagues did a reenactment. Morning, April 27th, 2010 to determine if they could hear the front door shaking from
00:55:23
the bedroom. We're in the bedroom looking. Sergeant Shackle and Sergeant Wright were upstairs in the bedroom. I'm
00:55:28
at the front door. So, let me know when you guys are ready and I'll I'll try the
00:55:30
knob for 15 seconds. Then we are ready. They could not hear me filling with the door.
00:55:43
Sorry. Sergeant Gray says he also doubted Nick's story about the couple's eviction and a scheduled move the day
00:55:50
after Heidi was shot. There didn't appear to be anything boxed up or packaged up to
00:55:57
go. There were a few empty boxes in the dining room area. There was not a grand stack of boxes or anything for that
00:56:05
matter that would lead us to believe that they were going to pack up all in one day. Meanwhile, Heidi's mentors from
00:56:12
Calvary Church, Marcus and Kina, were learning the details about her death and the eviction. It It just didn't add up.
00:56:22
It just something wasn't right with that story. It seemed so out of the ordinary
00:56:27
that she would be moving and not have notified anyone, not have anything prepared for that because she planned
00:56:35
things out and she liked things to be orderly. On April 30th, 2010, 5 days after her passing, Marcus and Kina
00:56:45
attended Heidi's funeral. Yeah, the atmosphere at the funeral was there was a lot of emotion. At the
00:56:52
funeral, Marcus and Cina say they were struck by Nick's demeanor. I remember going through the receiving line and
00:57:01
shaking his hand. There was no grief showing. It just felt like he lacked emotion.
00:57:08
Marcus says he went as far as asking some of the couple's friends if Nick could have shot his wife. And the answer
00:57:15
I got was no. There's no way that Nick killed Heidi. He loved her. There there's just no way he could have done
00:57:21
that. and I just wasn't so sure about that. From what we gathered during our investigation, Nick and Heidi were in a
00:57:29
loving relationship. There was no problems or issues that anybody saw. Your first impression upon meeting Nick
00:57:38
Furus is no way in the world could he have committed a violent act. The day after the shooting, Nick's
00:57:46
family hired attorney Joe Freriedberg, who advised Nick to stop talking to the police. It didn't take long to realize
00:57:54
that he was being looked at as a suspect. When investigators asked Nick to sit down with their artist to draw a
00:58:04
sketch of the intruder, Freiriededberg advised him not to. They were going to use it as an opportunity to further
00:58:11
interview him. Instead, Nick and his attorney hired their own sketch artist. It was quite
00:58:18
odd that Nick would work with a private sketch artist and brought that drawing to police. That's the original.
00:58:27
And at that point, we were basically told that Nick would not be answering any more questions with regards to our
00:58:33
investigation. Investigators released Nick's sketch to the public, but it didn't generate any
00:58:40
leads. They kept working the case. Nick moved out of their home a few weeks after Heidi's
00:58:49
death. Two months later, he began a friendship with the sister of one of Heidi's best friends, Rachel Sanchez,
00:58:56
who was going through a divorce. At the time, I thought because we shared something traumatic, there was a deep
00:59:02
connection there. because I had come out of something traumatic myself in a relationship. I think Nick seemed to be
00:59:11
handling things well. It felt like he was very grounded. He was with his friends a lot and they were processing
00:59:19
together. So, I think just his his steadiness was an attractive quality. Rachel says the two bonded over their
00:59:28
faith. They began dating in the spring of 2011. At the time, God played a big part in my life. And I think that's
00:59:37
another quality that I saw in him, that he he loved God like I did. One year into their relationship, Nick
00:59:45
proposed. I knew it was coming. We had looked at rings beforehand, so it wasn't really a huge surprise. And a few months
00:59:52
later, the couple married. They started a family. We did have kids pretty quickly. and soon were the parents of
01:00:01
three children. He absolutely loves his kids so much. Andrew and Emily Ericson are friends of Nick. They say for a long
01:00:09
time, Nick didn't talk much about Heidi's murder. It just didn't seem like there was a lot of room for his grief
01:00:16
during that time. But they say when he did talk about it, his story was always the same. What did he tell you? Same
01:00:24
thing he's always told everyone from the first day. same thing he'd tell you today that someone was breaking into the
01:00:32
house and they were going to try to get out and there was an altercation and tragically Heidi was
01:00:41
killed. Investigators still did not believe that story. But 5 years after Heidi's death, with little movement in
01:00:49
the case, they finally got a break. Someone called in a tip. there was somebody that looked exactly like the
01:00:55
sketch and put a name to Nick's sketch. Somebody called said, "I have an experience with this guy. I think I know
01:01:02
who it is." [Music] After five years without a break in Heidi Fergus's murder case, out of the
01:01:22
blue, a tipster called police with a name after seeing this sketch of the suspect. But there was a problem, says
01:01:31
investigator Cypes. He was already in prison on the date of Heidi's death. Nick's second wife, Rachel, says her
01:01:42
husband rarely talked about the case being solved. But I had asked him, "Are you going to put effort into seeing if
01:01:49
you can find the person that did this?" He didn't reach out to anyone as far as I know. I know that from his lawyers, he
01:01:56
was told to just stay silent. Police found it odd Nick never checked in. through four investigators in this case.
01:02:05
He never contacted one of us to ask the status. Was this case ever considered a cold case? It wasn't ever considered a
01:02:12
cold case because prosecutors Rachel Crocker and Elizabeth Lawman joined the investigation in 2015. There just was
01:02:20
not a lot of new information coming in. Heidi's family would check in on her birthday. Is there anything new
01:02:28
development? And there would be new developments when Detective Cypes took over Heidi's case in 2019. Seems her
01:02:36
fresh set of eyes really made a huge difference. It was absolutely critical. I think Cypes definitely restarted
01:02:43
something. Cypes dug deep, reviewing the entire case file, including an examination of a financial timeline she
01:02:51
compiled with the help of the FBI. I had the luxury of looking back on all of these things several years
01:02:59
later. Cypes learned Nick worked at his family's carpet installation business. They were contractors for Home
01:03:06
Depot. Heidi was a clerk at a financial services company in St. Paul. Their combined income was about $70,000 a
01:03:14
year. They seemed like they were on top of all the bills before they bought the house.
01:03:21
But Lawman says the home purchase in 2007 strained the couple's finances and that home was just too much for
01:03:30
them. By the time Heidi died in April of 2010, the couple was deeply in debt. He
01:03:37
had not paid the mortgage in 22 months. In fact, the couple had lost their home to foreclosure and would be forced to
01:03:45
move out. But Cypes discovered Heidi apparently had no idea. After reviewing the couple's texts
01:03:53
and emails, Cypes saw no evidence Nick ever told Heidi they were in financial trouble. There was no communication
01:04:01
between the two of them to indicate that she had any idea the depth of their financial issues.
01:04:09
I was able to determine through the foreclosure and eviction attorneys that there was no paperwork Heidi had signed,
01:04:16
that nobody had ever talked to Heidi. Nobody met Heidi. Heidi didn't go to the eviction hearing on March 8th, 2010. Cy
01:04:24
says Nick and Heidi's family and friends didn't know the couple had to relocate.
01:04:29
And if she was serious about moving, she would have gotten the day off. So, she was planning to go to work. Yes.
01:04:37
Why do you think he kept her in the dark so long? Shame. I believe he was concerned about the shame of what he had
01:04:43
done, how it would look, that he couldn't come clean with her. You know, it had gotten too big at that point.
01:04:50
And when Cypes talked to the couple's friends, she learned why Nick wanted to hide their financial situation.
01:04:58
He was described by his friends as being wise and being the person that they would go to for advice.
01:05:05
Nick Furkus really presented as somebody who had some of those bigger, tougher life questions figured out. What kind of
01:05:12
person do you want to be? What kind of relationship do you want to have with God? What does that tell you as you're
01:05:19
investigating the case and you see someone in that type of personality? It just became easier to see that this was
01:05:28
someone who did not want his friends, his family to know the extent to which he had failed.
01:05:34
CYP says she discovered more of Nick's lies when she learned about a conversation Heidi had with a friend
01:05:41
just the day before she died. Heidi had talked to us about how Nick had told her
01:05:47
that they were victims of identity theft. It was somewhere around $180 to $200,000 worth of identity
01:05:53
theft. Wasn't true. They weren't the victims. This was all untrue. But as Cypes tried to figure out if
01:06:01
there was a connection between Nick's lies and Heidi's death, she learned Nick and Rachel had divorced. I remember very
01:06:10
well when Nikki Cypes came to my door. And that Nick had also kept secrets from her. Did Rachel ever say anything about
01:06:19
why their marriage dissolved? She did. There were financial issues between the two of them. Nick was lying about a lot
01:06:28
of things. This is a story that's happened before and it didn't end well. That terrified
01:06:43
me. Could there actually have been an intruder? After spending 19 months digging deep
01:07:01
into the Fergus case file, reviewing crime scene photos, 911 calls. Do you remember what
01:07:08
he was wearing? And Nick's video interview. She was running away, so he definitely hit her in the back.
01:07:14
Investigator Nicole Cypes had come to one conclusion. What really matters is what happened in that foyer and there
01:07:22
was no third person. You never found anyone else's DNA. No. No DNA evidence, no physical evidence, no sign of a
01:07:29
struggle. To me, there were only two people in that house when Heidi was killed. And they were Nick and Heidi.
01:07:40
As part of the new investigation, Cypes reached out to Nick's second wife, Rachel. What did she know? In 2020, she
01:07:50
came to my door. And I was like, why are you here? And she was like, to talk about Heidi Fergus. At first, Rachel,
01:07:57
then divorced from Nick, says she was reluctant to talk. You're asking for a lot when you get involved in something
01:08:03
like this, and I didn't want to, but I also knew that it was the right thing to do, and it was for truth. Rachel told
01:08:10
Cypes Nick had lied about their finances during their marriage. I found a letter
01:08:17
saying that we hadn't paid our property taxes and that we were going to get evicted in 2020 if we didn't pay them.
01:08:23
And when I saw that, I was like, "Oh no." Like, he was definitely repeating the same things as he did with Heidi
01:08:32
with me. During that time, Rachel says Nick's dishonesty started to make her question whether he had also lied about
01:08:42
Heidi's death. And I said, "We got to sit down and talk." Rachel secretly recorded the conversation on her phone.
01:08:50
Your actions have caused me to just distrust you completely. If there was going to be a confession, I was going to
01:08:56
make sure that I could prove that he said it. And the fact that your lying was so easy for you to do in front
01:09:04
of me over and over and over makes me think that I could murder my wife. That you could lie about something. That I
01:09:14
could murder my wife. Yes. When I listen, I think this silence kills me. He's angry at me. How dare I think those
01:09:32
things? Why aren't you saying you didn't tell me I'm not right? Rachel later shared the recordings with
01:09:40
investigator Cypes. The behavior that he exhibited in his marriage with Rachel was almost duplicative of how he hid
01:09:48
things from Heidi. We cannot let this man be out on the street any longer. For prosecutor
01:09:56
Elizabeth Lawman, the time had come to act. I told Sergeant Cypes, "We're charging him. Let's do it." 11 years
01:10:05
after Heidi was shot to death on May 19th, 2021, a St. Paul police SWAT team arrested Nick Fergus at his house and
01:10:14
charged him with seconddegree murder. A grand jury ultimately indicted Fergus on first and seconddegree murder
01:10:22
charges. Our minds were absolutely blown. Heidi's friends, Marcus and Kina, were relieved. It's hard to to say. I
01:10:32
don't know what emotion you even put to it. It's hard to say excited. I felt grateful. We don't understand. Nick's
01:10:38
friends, Emily and Andrew, you have to believe that a good man with no history of violence killed the woman that he
01:10:45
loved more than anything in life for no reason. That's what you have to believe.
01:10:50
We can't get there. After remaining free on bail for almost two years on January
01:10:56
27th, 2023, Nick Fus went on trial. Prosecutors would not be allowed to call Nick's second wife, Rachel, to
01:11:06
testify or use her tape conversation with Nick. The judge ruled her testimony and the recording had no bearing on the
01:11:14
case. I went into it with an open mind. Natalie Michael served on the jury. Did he appear like a man who would kill his
01:11:25
wife? No, he did not. A lot through the trial. He was putting his head down. When they showed
01:11:31
the photos of the two of them together, you know, he seemed like he really was in love with her. I think Nick was
01:11:38
someone who lived two lives. Prosecutors presented an unusual motive. They told the jurors Nick Fergus staged a burglary
01:11:46
because he was desperate and ashamed. His secrets were about to be revealed to Heidi and everyone else. All of his kind
01:11:55
of cards of lies are about to crumble. He would have been exposed as a complete failure, a liar um to his friends and
01:12:04
community and instead he's a victim. He walks away from this supported by his friends, supported by his family. Nick
01:12:15
had no reason. Nick's lawyers Joe Freedberg and Robert Richmond say that simply makes no sense as a motive. There
01:12:23
was nothing about murdering the woman who everyone agreed he loved that would help his situation. And they say the
01:12:32
state's contention that Heidi didn't know about the couple's finances simply was not true. Nick said she was in on
01:12:40
all of the major decisions. He would say to us that they're making Heidi out to be an imbecile.
01:12:50
At first, I was wondering how she couldn't know about the finances or some of the foreclosure, some of the things
01:12:56
happening. But Natalie Michael says the prosecution's case did not hinge on motive. The prosecution said it really
01:13:04
is. Was there an intruder in the house or was there not an intruder? It was our position that there had been an intruder
01:13:12
exactly the way Nick described to the police on the 911 call. There's something that's broken off and show me
01:13:21
at the scene. The information that Nick gave at the scene is that this intruder came into the house at the hospital. He
01:13:28
just came in and to Sergeant Gray guy that was there. I think he he grabbed the barrel. Nick's lawyers say police
01:13:37
didn't find the intruder's fingerprints or DNA at the scene because as Nick told
01:13:41
investigators in his interview at the hospital, what else can you describe from him? The intruder was wearing
01:13:48
gloves. Gloves. He's wearing gloves. You don't always leave DNA and especially when your hands are covered. So, what am
01:13:56
I looking at here? But prosecutors say there was something else missing from the scene besides fingerprints. This is
01:14:04
a physical model to scale that was created by the FBI. They used this model to show the jurors there was no evidence
01:14:12
of a struggle. I felt that it was very important for us to be able to recreate how small that entryway is. Let's say
01:14:20
the intruder gets in. They have this struggle and they have this life and death struggle right in this area with
01:14:26
nothing disturbed on the table. Exactly. And then Heidi gets shot square in the back in a very clear shot. This
01:14:37
animation created by the FBI shows that the bullet that killed Heidi was most likely shot from shoulder level. The
01:14:44
height at which Heidi is shot fits exactly on Nick's shoulder to aim and to fire.
01:14:52
Nick's attorneys say there was direct evidence that showed there was an intruder. In fact, there were tool marks
01:15:00
in the door which would be consistent with someone wedging a screwdriver between the frame and the door. Attorney
01:15:10
Joe Friedberg says Fergus's next door neighbor, Brandon Okconor, testified he heard a voice. You shot her. You shot
01:15:18
me. Uh, please, please, no. Something along those lines. That means there must have been another person in that house.
01:15:28
Nick was talking to a third person when he said that. But prosecutors say Brandon may have misheard Nick while he
01:15:37
was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher. He is screaming about being shot and he
01:15:47
did that over almost 7 minutes. Okay. Stay on the phone with me. Okay. Nick Fus did not take the stand. After
01:15:58
an 11-day trial, the case went to the jury. If there's anything in this case, there's reasonable doubt. Yeah.
01:16:10
See more evidence from the case at 48 hours.com. [Music] It was a hard fought litigated trial as
01:16:31
the state and Nick Fergus's defense team presented their closing arguments on February 10th, 2023. We had great we
01:16:40
thought circumstantial evidence that what Nick said happened did not happen. Attorneys on both sides were hopeful the
01:16:48
jury would make the right decision. It's not enough if you have a hunch. There was no direct evidence that Nick
01:16:57
murdered his wife. In her closing argument, prosecutor Crocker said Fergus shot Heidi while she
01:17:07
was on the phone with the 911 operator. Someone's trying west. So that call does end with a very very
01:17:17
loud noise and the call goes dead and we believe that that's the gunshot. According to phone records, 65 seconds
01:17:25
passed from that moment until Fergus made his 911 call. Somebody has broken. Crocker reenacted for jurors what she
01:17:37
believed Nick Fergus did before he made that call. I walked over in the courtroom to roughly as far as Heidi
01:17:44
would have been on the ground. Crouched down, turned her over um to check for a pulse to be sure that she was in fact
01:17:51
deceased. Walked back over, picked up the firearm, and demonstrated how he could
01:17:59
shoot himself and call 911. Where is the guy that shot you? At 65 seconds, there
01:18:04
was more than enough time for all of that to happen. To prove their theory, Fergus shot himself in the thigh. They
01:18:11
point to marks left by shotgun pellets at the bottom of the front door. When he shot himself, we believe that
01:18:21
Nick was about um here, which is how you would brace yourself, probably against the door if you're doing it to yourself.
01:18:28
Of his reasonable suspicion, but Fergus' attorneys challenged the 65second time frame. Attorney Robert Richmond says
01:18:36
phone records also show Fergus misdialed two numbers before getting through to 911, making it impossible to shoot
01:18:45
himself. What they reenacted was 65 seconds, which was ignoring the two missiles which happened at 38 seconds.
01:18:56
The fact that we cannot find the intruder is not evidence that there was no intruder. And if anything, because of
01:19:06
the next door neighbor, because of the tool marks, because of the 38 seconds, we feel that the evidence supports that
01:19:14
there was an intruder. This isn't blind belief. Nick's friends Emily and Andrew were convinced the
01:19:22
prosecution failed to prove Fergus was the shooter. We were open to hearing inconsistency of what Nick said, but
01:19:30
that didn't happen. On February 10th, 2023, the jurors got the case and in five hours returned with a verdict. My
01:19:41
last text to Nick was, "It has to be innocent. There's no way that they got to guilty this quickly." We rushed to
01:19:48
the courthouse and we were so wrong. Nick Furkus was found guilty on two counts of murder, premeditated and
01:19:58
intentional. I believe justice was served. Marcus and Kina were in the courtroom when the
01:20:04
verdict was read. Justice may have been slow, but fortunately, the jury got it right. It feels like this is the
01:20:11
beginning of healing. It's the beginning of a of a new chapter. Heidi's mom actually said
01:20:19
that for so many years they had to live with Nick Fergus's narrative and they knew it was wrong, but they just didn't
01:20:27
have another narrative. And to finally be able to have him finally held accountable, it it meant a lot to us.
01:20:35
For Sergeant Cypes, there is still the mystery of what led to the couple's financial problems.
01:20:42
We weren't able to definitively say what the money was spent on. Does that frustrate you greatly? I think it would
01:20:49
help complete the picture for some people. On April 13th, 2023, Nick Fergus was back in court for a sentencing
01:20:57
hearing and to hear victim impact statements. Growing up, Heidi was the quintessential little sister to me.
01:21:05
Heidi's brother, Peter Ericson. Because of the lies we were told as early as the
01:21:09
day after her murder, "It's been virtually impossible to find closure to our grief." Fergus refused to admit
01:21:16
guilt. I do maintain and will maintain to my dying breath my innocence of this crime. My body stands condemned to serve
01:21:22
another man's sentence, but my soul my soul remains free. Judge Leonardo Castro imposed the
01:21:34
maximum sentence. For it is the sense of law and judgment of this court that you
01:21:40
be committed to the commission of corrections for the remainder of your life without the possibility of release.
01:21:48
Good luck to you, sir. Godspeed. My kids are always what I think of first. Fergus's second wife, Rachel.
01:21:57
They lost in this, too, because one day they had a dad that they thought was somebody and the next day he's not that
01:22:04
person anymore. She often thinks about Heidi, too. I like to think I have a connection with
01:22:11
Heidi. She didn't get to have the voice that I have now. And so, I can only hope
01:22:17
that my voice is something she would be proud of. Heidi was a genuine, loving, sincere young woman who wanted
01:22:28
to live life to the fullest. She wouldn't want people to become bitter or angry because of what she had to
01:22:37
experience. I think that Heidi would want people to choose to love regardless of circumstances.
01:22:45
[Music] CBS next Saturday. 48 Hours brings you backtoback episodes all summer long.
01:23:05
Next week, social media clues. Johnny Alteringer would answer a dating app and disappear. She would track his location.
01:23:13
48 hours crime time double feature next Saturday on CBS streaming on Paramount Plus.
01:23:26
[Music] Aaron, this is Florida. Nothing strange [Music] here. The house was beautiful. It was 4,000 square ft. It
01:23:48
had a pool. a garage apartment. It was a great house. The only problem was upstairs.
01:23:56
Some of the rooms were too small and just the functionality did not work for some families. I could understand why
01:24:01
they'd want to renovate it. When did you first meet Shanti and David? Dave just called me on the phone
01:24:09
and asked if I'd come by and take a look at the project. He said that they had done some work. I wasn't at all prepared
01:24:15
for what I saw when I got there. [Music] They had fully disassembled this house to a degree that I'd never seen before.
01:24:25
It was rather astonishing. It was largely wide open. Like you're inside of a giant shoe box.
01:24:33
This house became more than just a project to David Trronis. It was his life. He obsessed on it. This house is
01:24:43
the center point to the story and ultimately led to Shanti's demise. This case all started with a call to 911
01:24:53
placed at approximately 3:51 p.m. on April 24th, 2018 by Dave Tronis. Hello. And David says that he came home and
01:25:06
found Shanti floating in the bathtub. I believe she's not feeding. Did that story make sense? Absolutely
01:25:17
not. Shanti was extensively beaten. It makes me emotional. I feel bad for her family and for her son.
01:25:32
It's upsetting that she won't get that life with him. Clearly Dave Tronis from the very
01:25:39
beginning is a suspect. Absolutely. Dave was asked to go to the station. Thank you. And voluntarily remain there
01:25:51
for hours. Just have a seat there. It'll be a little bit. He did not request counsel. He consented to
01:25:58
swabs, to clippings, to a search of his person. Dave went into that interview with an
01:26:07
agenda. They've never been more love. We were so happy. And he just started getting confronted and confronted and
01:26:13
confronted. I told you she was murdered. Murdered. Someone took her life from her
01:26:19
and there's nothing. You can't even fake it. That's how much you could give it. And it became a war of wills in that
01:26:28
room. I don't have any explanation for her, the severity of her injuries. And didn't David win that war of wills? He
01:26:36
was not broken. Well, Dave didn't confess. Are we boring you? It seems pretty clear
01:26:45
these two detectives, they went into this room, decided that David was a murderer, and then went the extra mile
01:26:52
to try to put a file together to prove such. Did you guys get into an argument? Was she about the house? No.
01:27:01
Is it possible that without this house, Shanti might still be alive? I think that's completely
01:27:09
true. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Delaney Park is a wellestablished neighborhood. It's been around for over
01:28:02
a hundred years. Tara Stevens knows Delaney Park inside and out. She's a realtor who buys and sells homes there.
01:28:12
It's a great place to live, to raise a family. A lot of outside activity, great school system. It's a It's a great
01:28:18
neighborhood. So, Delaney Park is a mile or so from downtown Orlando. Ryan Vesio, a former
01:28:28
prosecutor with the Orlando State Attorney's Office, got to know the area well when he led the investigation into
01:28:36
the death of Shanti Cooper in April 2018. Did Shanti ever indicate to any friends or family that she was afraid of
01:28:45
anyone? No. So, you guys knew each other approximately 5 years this month? Vesio and investigators dug in to learn
01:28:55
all they could about Shanti and her husband David Trz. The couple had been married for
01:29:01
more than a year. Everybody we spoke to about Dave and Dave's background said that he was highly intelligent. It's
01:29:08
what made him successful when he worked in business. How would you describe Shanti?
01:29:14
Shanti Cooper was a hardworking, dedicated mom who cared deeply, deeply about her son. Her son was her world.
01:29:26
Shanti's son, Jackson, was then 8 years old. She shared custody with his father,
01:29:31
Jim Cooper, whom Shanti had divorced in 2013. She launched a lucrative financial
01:29:38
software business and worked out of her home office. How did she meet Dave Tranis? Dave was outside of Minneapolis,
01:29:46
Minnesota at the time. They met over the internet and started exchanging messages
01:29:52
and profiles and that turned into emails. Investigators later found this document
01:29:58
on Shanti's computer that shows just how smitten she was. Dave, I will have to say I think this will be a delicious
01:30:08
detour. Amazing. magnificent life-changing detour. I've had a pep in my step since we started this little
01:30:17
email affair in Minnesota. Dave had just ended a long marriage, but within months of
01:30:24
meeting Shanti online. He moved to Orlando. Dave fell in love with Delaney Park and the house at 218 East Copeland
01:30:34
Drive, a house that came complete with its own gargoyles. We sold it to him for 607500 which was a really really good
01:30:42
deal. How did he pay for it? Cash. Dave put the house in trust for himself and his mother and soon introduced Shanti to
01:30:50
Tara. They seemed very happy. She was a beautiful, very nice person. I enjoyed meeting her. Tara did not feel quite the
01:30:58
same about Dave. Dave's personality changed a little bit after the contract was signed. I just saw a
01:31:06
very different side of him. He was like a a guy or a child who wants to get their way and they don't stop until they
01:31:13
do. You were glad when the deal was over. Absolutely. I was very glad. I didn't get a good feeling from
01:31:23
him. Cindy and Dan Dao are Shanti's relatives by marriage. They didn't like Dave at first, but it wasn't long before
01:31:31
Cindy had a change of heart. I love her. So, I grew to love him. We absolutely adored him. The first time we
01:31:41
had lunch, he walked in and he said, "How lucky am I? I get to have lunch with two of the most beautiful women
01:31:47
that I know." I mean, that's charming. In 2015, Dave and Shanti moved into their new home and attempted to remodel
01:31:58
it with Shanti footing the bill. What did Dave do all day? It's a great question. If you ask Dave, he says that
01:32:07
he worked on the house and worked on the renovations and took care of the property and cleaned the pool.
01:32:14
Contractors came and went. Demolition went on and on, but the renovation was an expensive failure. By 2018, the main
01:32:25
part of the house was unlivable. Shanti was reduced to working and sleeping above the garage in a small
01:32:33
apartment. Where did Dave sleep? I think he slept downstairs with the dogs. Maybe not all
01:32:40
the time, but I'm pretty sure he was down there. Desperate to resolve the housing
01:32:49
situation, Dave turned to Keith Ary, a local house renovator who also appeared on a reality TV show called Zombie House
01:32:58
Flipping. Neighborhoods are under attack from Zombie Houses. What is Zombie House Flipping? Zombie
01:33:08
House flipping is a house flipping TV show where we take houses that are the worst of the worst.
01:33:16
Is anything broken? I think we have a termite problem. And what we do is bring them back to life. I looked at the
01:33:23
house. I realized that the structure was suspect and uh politely stepped outside.
01:33:31
An engineer discovered the only thing holding up the house was 2 in of stucco. It was rather astonishing. They took
01:33:39
away all the interior dividing walls and basically what was left was a twostory shell. Weren't you tempted to just run
01:33:47
for the hills? Yeah, but at the same time, you rarely come across a challenge that's that
01:33:57
uh that bold. Keith was up for the challenge and began shoring up the interior. And then he got the go-ahad to
01:34:05
use the house in the next season of Zombie House Flipping. This is Zombie House Flipping.
01:34:13
It was midappril 2018 and filming was set to begin in early May. But there was a problem. Getting Dave and Shanti
01:34:24
together to talk in fa in person was proving to be really difficult. Keith went to the house to meet with the
01:34:33
couple one last time to be sure they were on board. And they both said, "Yes, we understand." And then she took off
01:34:41
immediately just and left. I got a sense that she was pissed off at him. Theio said Shanti had been trying for years to
01:34:50
get her name on the trust that owned the house, but Dave never followed through and it seemed like things just sort of
01:34:57
culminated to a boiling point. It was only days before Shanti's murder. She desperately wanted stability in her
01:35:06
life, but was living in a house that was anything but. Her name was not on the deed, and she had already spent a lot of
01:35:14
money on what was essentially Dave's house. Shanti was the bankroll, the sole bankroll to almost a4 million
01:35:23
renovation. What did she get for her $250,000? Well, a lot of headaches and heartaches.
01:35:39
[Music] Thank you. Shortly after Shanti was pronounced dead, Dave Tranis went to Orlando police
01:35:58
headquarters. I'll get here as soon as I can. where he remained without a lawyer for
01:36:05
14 hours. We got to figure this out together. Okay. Of course. He didn't attempt to conceal anything. Richard
01:36:12
Celelesi is Dave's attorney. He gave the law enforcement access to everything that they needed, everything that they
01:36:18
wanted, and he laid himself out there for examination by all. We want to say how sorry we are for your loss. At the
01:36:27
start, detectives Terresa Sprag and Barb Sharp seem sympathetic. Take a minute. Okay, I know this is
01:36:36
super tough. They're very good at building rapport and have a tremendous amount of experience. If you have a
01:36:43
suspect who's willing to talk, you just hit play and sit back and let them go on
01:36:48
and on and on. And that's what Dave does. Dave sticks with his story. He took the dogs to a park in the
01:36:56
afternoon. And after he returned, he found Shanti, still wearing her pajamas, floating in the tub. So, I
01:37:06
could hear the water is running. I see her laying. One of her legs is kind of sticking up and out a little bit, and
01:37:15
it's just extremely awful. Can you tell me what your address is? He tells the detectives that he tried to
01:37:26
perform CPR but couldn't get Shanti to breathe. She was dead when first responders arrived. Dave has a lot to
01:37:35
say and a lot to say to try to convince the detectives that he wasn't involved in his wife's death. I think something
01:37:43
went wrong. Either she slipped or she fell or she blacked out. Why did he agree to sit down and talk to these
01:37:54
detectives without an attorney? Because he had nothing to hide and he didn't think that it would hurt him. But the
01:38:00
veteran detectives began to pick at his story and question how Shanti's bloody cheek and bruised eye came from a slip
01:38:09
in the tub. I don't have any explanation. This is what I found. Somebody who slips and falls doesn't
01:38:17
receive the amount of blunt force trauma to focused areas in the head. Detectives
01:38:23
also had spotted blood on Shanti's bed and suspected that's where she had been killed, but Dave says the blood
01:38:32
likely was from Shanti's period. It did get on the bed spread and it did get on the bed. There was a lot of other
01:38:40
evidence that would be inconsistent with this being blood associated with a menstrual cycle. Detectives also
01:38:48
suspected, and Shanti's autopsy later confirmed, that she was strangled. But Celelesi says as frustrating as it
01:38:58
may have been to authorities, Dave can't explain Shanti's injuries, not because he's lying, but
01:39:07
because he simply doesn't know. He took his best guess based upon what he come to find. He doesn't know what
01:39:14
happened, is the point. The detectives press on for hours, taking turns and peppering Dave with tougher and tougher
01:39:23
questions. Did you two argue? No, absolutely not. Did you fight? Absolutely not. Did you
01:39:32
harm Shanti in any way? Absolutely not. Sharp and Sprag also question his timeline. Dave says that he called 911
01:39:43
about 5 minutes after he found Shanti. You've got to help us understand. But detectives insist that doesn't match
01:39:51
what they found at the house. There's no splashing of water anywhere in the bathroom. The inside of the tub is dry.
01:39:59
Completely dry. And she's damp. She's not even wet. So, you've got to help us. Can you do that?
01:40:07
Everything. They're drawing conclusions based upon observations, and they're moving forth based upon these
01:40:13
assumptions. They try to zero in on a possible motive. Did she catch you with another woman? Did she have a boyfriend?
01:40:23
Did was she about the house? No. But given the sorry state of the house, detectives begin to wonder if that had
01:40:32
something to do with Shanti's murder. I can't imagine how stressful it must have
01:40:37
been. You know, not living in the home you want to live in and it's taken two plus years, 3 years. Um, I'm I'm sick to
01:40:45
death about what happened, but nothing happened today because of there was no animosity between us whatsoever.
01:40:53
And he says Shanti wasn't upset that her name wasn't on the trust that owned the
01:40:59
house. So, we had kind of talked about it and debated it and we finally just said, "It doesn't really matter. Let's
01:41:06
just move forward." Teresa and Barb are tenacious. They don't stop. They're wellversed in interrogation techniques.
01:41:14
You know, we saw the good cop, bad cop. We saw manipulation. Barb Sharp even moves her hand to Dave's knee and adopts
01:41:22
a more subtle tone. It will be okay. We can't help you until you help us. Before Teresa Sprag begins another
01:41:32
attack, she treats you like a landscaper, like the pool boy. Probably because she's bringing in the money. As
01:41:39
the hours tick by, what do you want your mom to think about you? They try anything they can to get him to confess.
01:41:48
Are you religious? You want to pray? This almost became a game of psychological warfare
01:41:54
in that interview room. Dave began the interview by saying how happy he had been with Shanti. But almost 8 hours
01:42:02
into the interrogation, the detectives aren't buying it. And you claim to love that
01:42:09
woman. I would be under the table in a ball if I was in love with that woman and she was dead. I would be
01:42:17
inconsolable. Do you think that he was heenalized because he didn't act the way detectives wanted him to act? Oh, time
01:42:25
time and time again. You know, you fake cried for about seven or eight hours. Say, not one tear came out of your eyes.
01:42:32
Not one. There's a lot of conclusions being drawn off of what they consider to be an odd affect of Mr. Trron. And I
01:42:40
think that that's a dangerous thing to do because we all react to stress differently. We all grieve differently.
01:42:47
Dave even agrees to take a polygraph, but by then it was the middle of the night and investigators couldn't find
01:42:55
anyone to administer it. They had to let him go at the end of the interview. How did they feel about that?
01:43:06
You always want to make the arrest right up front. You do. With Dave Tronis free,
01:43:12
police would have to keep digging for clues. But even they were surprised by what they found. Is it fair to say that
01:43:21
Dave Tronis was living a double life? At least two lives. She didn't slip and fall. It's not a
01:43:39
possibility. Even though detectives were outright accusing Dave Tron of murdering
01:43:45
Shanti, you strangled her. Some of her relatives like Cindy Dao believed him. Are you kidding? I bet my last dollar
01:43:55
that it wasn't him. I thought he was innocent. You honestly did, Cindy. Why? I think it was just the growth of our
01:44:04
relationship and how she adored him. Absolutely adored him and it looked very mutual to everyone. Did she ever express
01:44:15
any concern or fear of Dave? Never. Never. After being questioned by detectives,
01:44:25
Dave headed straight to his home in Delaney Park and that's where Cindy found him. I stood him up and turned him
01:44:34
around and looked at his arms and there was not a scratch on him. There was nothing. Cindy, did you ever ask him
01:44:43
point blank, did you have something to do with the death of Shanti? I did. What did he say?
01:44:50
No. I would not kill the love of my life. Defense attorney Richard Zeleleski says
01:44:56
the problem with this case is that detectives and prosecutors were convinced from the start that Dave
01:45:03
Tranis was Shanti's killer. Zeleleski says the bias of the investigators is clear from the police report. They've
01:45:12
already suggested that they have it figured out like bull in a china shop trying to just make this work at all
01:45:18
costs because they've done nothing to develop other suspects. But Vesio denies that. He says detectives checked out
01:45:25
every possible suspect and got lucky when an important lead fell into their laps. A worker from Club Orlando called
01:45:34
and shared that they knew of Dave Tronis because he was a patron at the club. What is Club Orlando? Club Orlando is a
01:45:44
same-sex bath house. Did Dave have a membership at Club Orlando? Several memberships. Every six months, Dave
01:45:52
renewed his membership. Detectives headed to the club to investigate and found a longtime club
01:45:59
employee who in this police recorded interview says he witnessed Dave having sex at the club. I was just walking
01:46:08
through And I saw David uh he was giving oral sex to this guy. From what everybody who
01:46:15
knew Shanti has said, she would absolutely have not tolerated it, put up with it, endorsed it. It just wouldn't
01:46:24
have happened. There's a significant possibility that Shanti knew all about it. And why do you believe that? Because
01:46:31
none of her family members seem to know anything about it. and and her family members seem to indicate that if Shanti
01:46:38
did know, she'd be upset. And and I appreciate that. But uh what you tell your mom and dad about your sex life and
01:46:44
what you do uh behind closed doors, you know, people are people, adults are adults, and life is messy.
01:46:52
But Vesio wonders if Shanti ultimately did discover Dave's duplicity on the night she was murdered. Had that
01:47:00
revelation made Shanti threaten to turn off the money spigot once and for all, but she would be killed because of a
01:47:08
house? Well, what would somebody do when they were about to lose the most important thing in their
01:47:16
life? Because in April of 2018, the most important thing in Dave's life was that
01:47:23
house. [Music] Dave told Cindy and others that he believed Shanti may have been murdered
01:47:33
by a burglar and the defense claimed that $5,000 in cash was missing from the house. Also missing Shanti's diamond
01:47:42
engagement ring valued at approximately $15,000. That was highly, highly suspicious. The
01:47:50
detectives wanted to get to the bottom of it. Why couldn't it have been exactly as Dave said, that he leaves and someone
01:47:59
breaks into the house, beats her, leaves her there, and Dave comes home. Why doesn't that fit? Well, the lack of
01:48:07
forced entry. This scene did not have any sort of evidence of a struggle. There's thousands of dollars of
01:48:14
valuables that are left in plain sight. A private investigator hired by defense lawyers canvas neighbors asking them
01:48:25
about a particular homeless man who reportedly had been seen around Delaney Park. It was said he resembled the actor
01:48:32
Woody Harrelson. What about the transient that everyone describes who looks a lot like Woody Harelson?
01:48:41
I mean, when you got nothing better, you throw everything against the wall and see if something sticks.
01:48:47
This home is at 218 East Copeland Drive. Detective Teresa Sprag tracked Woody down and recorded this interview. You
01:48:57
see there's a large blue dumpster in the driveway. Have you ever been there? No.
01:49:03
Nothing placed Woody inside Dave and Shanti's home, but Vesio says his interview shows police chased down every
01:49:11
lead, including checking out her ex-husband. Shanti had had a bad divorce. This was not an easy end of the
01:49:21
marriage. Did you look at Jim Cooper? Yes, Mr. Cooper was interviewed and Jim Cooper was eliminated as a suspect very
01:49:32
early on. He had an alibi. On August 29th, 2018, 4 months after Shanti's murder, Dave Tronis was
01:49:42
arrested on a charge of firstdegree murder and held without bail. And how did the two of you react when you heard
01:49:50
that? I wasn't believing it whatsoever. I thought they were just trying to solve
01:49:55
a murder easily. I always had the suspicion. Dave's arrest gave prosecutors another piece of
01:50:03
the puzzle. Shanti's missing engagement ring. The ring is probably one of the most powerful and damning pieces of
01:50:12
evidence in this case. As long as that expensive ring was missing, Dave Tranis could argue that a burglar had murdered
01:50:19
Shanti. But the day he was arrested, police found it among his possessions. We searched the room at his mother's
01:50:27
house where he was living, and lo and behold, we found the rings in his suitcase in his bedroom.
01:50:34
Still, Dave's arrest was not the end of the investigation. It led to a cascading
01:50:41
series of new revelations that surprised even a veteran prosecutor like Ryan Vesio. This was a case that had so many
01:50:50
twists and turns. I would no longer make assumptions of anything. You don't learn this stuff in
01:50:57
law school. [Music] After the arrest of Dave Trz, investigators received a tip that took
01:51:25
them completely by surprise. It led them to Minnesota and back in time to when a
01:51:32
much younger Dave was married to a woman named Carol. Former close friends of Carol told detectives that they believe
01:51:41
Dave may have been poisoning her. As soon as Carol got married to Dave, she started suffering a bunch of unknown
01:51:49
health issues. That made prosecutor Ryan Vesio wonder if Shanti could have been poisoned. In
01:51:57
Shanti's case, she had appendicitis and had to have an appendecttomy. Shanti had
01:52:02
had that emergency appendecttomy eight weeks before her death. Appendicitis and poisoning have similar symptoms and Dave
01:52:11
told detectives that Shanti had digestion problems right up to the day she died. She hasn't found since the
01:52:19
appendecttomy a diet that she can eat regularly and feel good. [Music] Vesio needed more information. So he and
01:52:30
detective Terresa Sprag went to Minnesota in November of 2018 to meet Carol face to face and recorded this
01:52:39
interview. I have issues with chronic pain and immune system issues that are not necessarily definitive.
01:52:50
Carol told Vesio she also struggled with gut issues and that Dave cooked most of
01:52:57
their meals. Has it ever come into your frame of thought that your marriage to David Trronis or him cooking or making
01:53:06
you drinks was making you sick? No. Have you ever thought that any of your issues
01:53:11
related to your health problems was him poisoning you? No. Carol said her health issues continued
01:53:19
even after her divorce from Dave. Yet Vesio says he remains suspicious. It very well could have been a scenario to
01:53:28
where Dave was providing both of them with items that caused them to be ill. We just could
01:53:35
never have real concrete proof of it. Theio wondered if there was another reason Carol seemed to be protecting her
01:53:46
former husband and whether it had anything to do with Dave's finances. We saw thousand pages of bank records
01:53:55
belonging to Dave Tronis. One thing that we noticed was that Dave and Carol still
01:54:00
had a joint bank account together. That account at times contained hundreds of thousands of dollars, but Carol said
01:54:09
she simply had forgotten to take her name off that account. People who are divorcing each other don't leave assets
01:54:15
on the table, and they sure as heck don't leave them together. It's unclear where that money came from.
01:54:22
Vesio believes that Carol, who was not charged with any crime, could be helping Dave manage his money while he's in
01:54:30
jail. I think that Carol is involved in David's finances and has some level of control.
01:54:38
The surprises in the case kept coming. Soon after Shanti's death, detectives had placed a surveillance camera pointed
01:54:46
toward the outside of Dave's house. Detective Sprag was interested to see who was coming and going out of the
01:54:53
house. And that camera ended up actually turning into a pretty valuable piece of
01:54:57
evidence. That camera captured images of private investigators hired by Dave's original law firm coming and going.
01:55:06
Detectives believe that when one of those lawyers, Robert Mandel, realized that the PIs were on camera, he placed a
01:55:14
call to Vesio. I never ever expected that he was going to tell me that he in fact had an item of physical evidence
01:55:24
that he had been holding on to for 11 months. Never would have expected it in a thousand years. And what was that
01:55:31
evidence? They were a set of purported bloody sheets and it literally literally took
01:55:40
my breath away. That defense attorney, Robert Mandal, told Vesio that the defense team had acquired the bloody
01:55:47
sheets from the garage apartment where Shanti was found dead, but had never turned them over to the prosecution.
01:55:57
But Ryan, as shocking as that is, that wasn't the only evidence that later turned up, was it? No. I ended that call
01:56:05
with the defense attorney and said, "Listen, if you have anything else, now is the time to tell
01:56:16
me." And about 10, 12 hours later, the next morning, I got another call from him. And that's when he said, "I have
01:56:26
one other item that I think we have to turn over." That item turned out to be a green cord.
01:56:35
Mandel told Vesio that a private investigator removed it from the house and preserved it in an evidence bag
01:56:42
because Dave was threatening to kill himself. Does that make sense to you? No. Makes zero sense to me.
01:56:52
Why go get the item and then treat it as if it were a piece of evidence? Remember, the autopsy revealed that
01:57:01
Shanti had been strangled and Vesio believed there was a real possibility that the green cord could be the murder
01:57:09
weapon. With the prosecution now in possession of that green cord, tests were conducted
01:57:25
to see if indeed it was the murder weapon used to strangle Shanti. Is there any evidence to indicate that in fact
01:57:33
that cord was used to kill Shanti? Nope. That cord did not have any DNA on it. But the cord wasn't picked up until
01:57:44
weeks after Shanti's death, and authorities believe Dave had plenty of time to clean it. Investigators had
01:57:51
spent months examining all the evidence, leading Vesio to craft his own theory about when Shanti was killed.
01:58:00
We found one single earring was placed on the nightstand. The other earring was in Shanti's ear. And what does that say
01:58:08
to you? That tells me that Shanti was most likely sitting on the side of her bed preparing for bed, taking those
01:58:17
earrings out, and that's when the attack happened. The sheets and bed frame did have Shanti's blood on them, and Shanti
01:58:27
didn't use her phone after 11:30 p.m. The scene was consistent with this attack happening somewhere in the
01:58:34
midnight to 2 3:00 a.m. time period. But David called 911 late in the afternoon,
01:58:41
saying he had just found Shanti floating in the tub. Celelesi says investigators
01:58:47
are jumping to unfair conclusions. A few hours of time off the grid doesn't allow
01:58:54
them to shift the timeline. Prosecutors continued to build their case even as Dave sat behind bars
01:59:02
listening to anyone who had information about Shanti's death. No matter how surprising the source, I met David
01:59:10
Trronis in Three Whiskey. Three Whiskey is a housing unit in the Orlando jail where Edward Gizmandi
01:59:18
shared a cell with Dave Tron. He slept next to me and I slept next to him. After getting out of jail, Gizmandi met
01:59:26
with Vesio and Sprag. He says that he and Dave began talking and bonded over a shared interest in obscure
01:59:34
hallucinogenics, including sapo, a poison derived from a South American frog. He said that you could use sapo to
01:59:42
put in people's salsa, and killed them quietly. Killer salsa might sound ridiculous, but
01:59:50
not so far-fetched when you consider that authorities suspected that David poisoned both his wives.
01:59:57
Gizmandi supplied even more information that if true was truly damning. He says Dave admitted that he and Shanti had a
02:00:06
fight before she died. He just said there there was an app on his phone that there was messages on that she had found
02:00:13
apparently that suggested he was having sex with men and she was going to show everybody. And what did Dave say he did?
02:00:21
He snapped. He said he freaked out and did what? He didn't specifically say that what he did, but that he had killed
02:00:28
his wife. Investigators were unable to corroborate Gizmandi's story about the app. We
02:00:37
didn't have any purchase records of apps and we did not see it on Dave's phone. I've read your statement and at no point
02:00:47
do I see anywhere where you had told them that David actually said, "I killed my wife." But sitting here now, you said
02:00:56
Dave told you I killed my wife. Yes, ma'am. In jail, he said I killed my wife. Word for word is what he told me.
02:01:04
But why wouldn't you tell the state's attorney's office that I did. I told him that he had snapped. That's the word
02:01:10
that I used. I don't remember if she had asked me did he admit to murdering her,
02:01:15
like word for word like that. One of the few things both the prosecution and the defense do agree on
02:01:23
is that neither is sure they can believe Gizmandi. He plead guilty to one count of lewd or lascivious behavior and is
02:01:32
now a registered sex offender and still on probation. This individual certainly has credibility issues.
02:01:41
Zeleleski took over Dave's defense in early 2020 after the original attorneys withdrew from the case.
02:01:51
Raising doubt isn't going to be difficult here. But Shanti's family has no doubt about
02:01:59
what should happen to Dave. He has to be found guilty. He is guilty. Cindy Dao, who once found Dave so
02:02:10
charming, feels very differently about him now. He should be sentenced to death. I want him to remember when he
02:02:21
looks at me. I want him to remember every lie. Every lie. [Music] When Cindy remembers Shanti, her heart
02:02:34
still breaks. She was a happy, giving, kind, fun, loving person who had a mission in
02:02:47
this life and she didn't get to fulfill it. [Music] In a fraction of a second, it changed my
02:03:55
life. Now I'm someone else. No warning, no premonition, nothing. My name is Corey Shaughnessy
02:04:07
and I used to own Gallery Jewelers in Austin, Texas. The thing that made the jewelry
02:04:14
business really fun is selling engagement rings, selling jewelry to people because they're marking special
02:04:21
occasions. Ted kind of had the same passion. He loved colored gemstones. We called ourselves gallery jewelers. It
02:04:28
should have been called Ted's Jewelers because it it really was all about him. March 1st was just a boring
02:04:38
day. He came home from work. We had dinner. I basically rolled over to go to sleep and the next thing I know, one of
02:04:47
the dogs barks. This was early morning hours. Two shooters enter the Shaughnessy home.
02:04:55
They quietly move through the home. Ted sits up in bed and he grabbed his gun to go see what it was. I hadn't even
02:05:06
gotten my head back on the pillow, I don't think, before I heard the first gunshot. And then there was a barrage of
02:05:13
gunfire. One of the shooters advances towards the master bedroom where Cory is. I grabbed
02:05:20
my gun. I started shooting back and I ran out of ammo. I just bailed into the closet. Travis County
02:05:29
911. Do you need police or paramedic? I don't know. I'm in the closet. There were shots fired. Help me. Okay. Well,
02:05:37
we're helping you, ma'am. Help me. I s heard this horrible, horrible moaning. And when I came out of the closet and I
02:05:45
saw Ted's legs and I could tell that he was dead. Okay. Oh my god. Take a deep breath. You do an Awesome Cory. Okay. Oh
02:05:54
god. Theodore Shaughnessy was shot dead in his Austin area home by an intruder. Cory Shaughnessy shot back at the
02:06:01
intruder and wasn't hurt. I was under the impression that this was a a robbery that had gone bad. There was nothing
02:06:09
stolen. We weren't finding anybody that had any ill feelings towards either one of them. We didn't have any idea who
02:06:17
committed this murder. Anybody that can do this is a sociopath. It's just absolutely
02:06:24
crazy. I don't even know why. I really don't know why. [Music] [Music] [Music] When Travis County Sheriff's detectives
02:07:24
Paulo and James Moore arrived to investigate a shooting at Ted and Corey Shaughnessy's Austin, Texas home early
02:07:33
on March 2nd, 2018, they first thought it might be a robbery gone wrong. It looked as though there was a home
02:07:43
invasion and a homeowner was killed. Inside the sprawling suburban home, it looked like a
02:07:55
battlefield. 55-year-old Ted Shaughnessy laid dead in a pool of blood near the kitchen table. He was
02:08:04
shot in the head, the back, the thigh, and the buttocks. One of the family's two pet Rottweilers,
02:08:14
Bart, had been shot to death as well. There was broken window glass everywhere. Bullets lodged in the walls,
02:08:24
casings all over the floor. Authorities noticed they were not all the same type.
02:08:30
We had 40 caliber and 380. So that told us that we had two shooters. Corey would tell police she
02:08:40
and Ted kept about 20 guns in the home and said she'd used her 357 revolver to shoot back at the attacker. It was a
02:08:49
hell of gunfire. Investigators had noticed a single wideopen ground floor window around the
02:08:58
side of the house and wondered if the intruders had used it to get in. Somebody took the screen off, set it
02:09:05
next to the window outside. That open window led into an unoccupied bedroom. And there, inside a drawer,
02:09:15
police found what seemed like an unlikely coincidence. There's a 40 caliber gun box in that drawer. It's
02:09:24
missing out of the box. Well, hang on. 40 caliber is one of the caliber that you were just describing. Yes. It meant
02:09:32
that Shaughnessy's empty gun box could have held a pistol that one of the intruders used. and had ejected bullet
02:09:39
casings near the victim. That information gets past me while I'm outside. Outside near Detective Moore, first
02:09:47
responders were looking after Cory Shaughnessy. Cory's hysterical. Cory would tell police she had not seen the
02:09:54
attackers faces, but she did have a hunch about why they'd come. Being a jeweler, you might someday be a target.
02:10:05
When you hear they own a jewelry store, what does that prompt in in in your minds? Automatically a motive. Someone
02:10:14
figuring there was some safe with a bunch of jewelry. Absolutely. Yes, that's right.
02:10:20
Cory broke the news by phone to the Shaughnessy son, Nick, then 19, who lived 2 hours away with his girlfriend,
02:10:27
Jackie, in College Station, Texas. They immediately drove to Austin, arriving about 800 a.m., Nick comes over and he's
02:10:37
he's emotional. He asks me what happened. Nick, Jackie, and Corey all agreed to help the investigation in any
02:10:46
way possible. Cory allowed police to search her phone. And though Nick said he hadn't been in Austin for about a month,
02:10:55
he and Jackie did the same. All three also agreed to answer questions at the station. I'm trying to
02:11:03
think of anything that could be helpful. Our goal was to just try to get as much information as possible. I I
02:11:12
didn't hear anything until the dog started barking and but Cory says the more police questioned her in the coming
02:11:19
days, the more a traumatic situation went from bad to worse. I am trying to get anything I can
02:11:28
to to help. She says they were not treating her like a victim. I was extremely angry at the sheriff's
02:11:37
department. Investigators still weren't sure if the murder was part of a random attack, a jewel heist gone
02:11:46
bad, or whether it was a targeted assassination. They weren't finding any relevant
02:11:53
unidentified prints at the scene, so they had to wonder if their sole surviving victim, Cory
02:12:00
Shaughnessy, was actually a suspect. She's the only person in the house and we have her husband who has been shot to
02:12:09
death. We know that she owns firearms, so it's obviously an option for us. They called her in for a series of
02:12:18
interviews. For the last one, she brought a lawyer who is seated on the left. I didn't know to It's not right.
02:12:25
Somebody killed him. No, it's not. And I want to find them. Me, too. You got a distraught wife. You got a
02:12:34
dead husband. You have to ask about the marriage, don't you? Yes. Ted was the people person. He was the front part of
02:12:43
the story. Investigators learned Corey and Ted had met in the early 80s at a video arcade
02:12:51
in Phoenix. They'd quickly discovered they had a lot in common, including a love of jewelry and eventually of each
02:13:00
other. They married and opened Gallery Jewelers. Everything seemed to be just about perfect.
02:13:09
As the jewelry business grew, Ted and Corey had decided to grow their family, too. In 2000, they adopted Nick at 16
02:13:18
months old from an orphanage in Ukraine. It was just instant love. It was. Yeah.
02:13:24
Instant. Cory says they all bonded even before bringing him home. There were animal
02:13:31
crackers involved. Skillful distribution of animal crackers. Yes. Yes. And by the
02:13:37
time we left, we were a family. She says Ted had a knack for helping people express their love with a sparkle.
02:13:45
Everybody loved Ted. Didn't have any enemies. By the time of the murder, the Shaughnessies were worth millions. But
02:13:53
maybe even more valuable to them, they counted some of their customers as close friends. We were very
02:14:00
happy. For Corey, being a parent was worth its weight in gold. Nicholas had everything a kid could
02:14:10
want. Yes. What was he into? He liked animals and he loved cars, especially fast ones. His father drove
02:14:21
race cars for fun and often took him to the track. He loved putting on Ted's helmet and his racing gloves and and all
02:14:27
of those things. In high school, she says her son found another love. Her name was Jackie Edison. After her
02:14:36
parents' divorce, Jackie had moved from New Jersey to Austin to live with her father. Nick brought her to meet his
02:14:43
parents in 2016. It was an awkward dinner, but Cory says Jackie eventually won them over, and before long, she was
02:14:53
spending so much time in the Shaughnessy's house, they actually let her move in.
02:14:59
Did you settle into a Okay. A serious girlfriend seems to be part of Nick's life and she's okay. I I did. She was
02:15:09
all right. In August of 2017, Nick and Jackie moved out to start a new life in College
02:15:16
Station. She in school, he as a day trader with his parents' financial backing. Ted and Corey would have less than a
02:15:25
year to enjoy their empty nest before that horrible night in March. Police stayed on the scene for
02:15:33
hours trying to process all the evidence. I was actually on call when the murder occurred.
02:15:41
Amy Meredith was an assistant district attorney and says police asked her to come help them process and preserve the
02:15:47
scene. An unusual request. She arrived around 11:00 a.m. and after looking around began to believe, as they did,
02:15:57
that Ted Shaughnessy probably knew who ever had attacked him. This was not a stranger. This was not a stranger
02:16:04
killing. Meredith was sure the home was just too big and too dark for a pair of random
02:16:11
robbers or jewel thief wannabes to find their way around. Maybe even more importantly, there was
02:16:19
nothing stolen. Nothing from that safe. No valuables missing from the rest of the
02:16:26
house. So everything for you pointed to inside job. Yes, without a doubt. [Music]
02:16:51
Cory Shaughnessy's frustration with investigators was growing. Thank you. All right. Well, again, I appreciate you
02:16:58
guys coming in. She says she'd known from the start that she was a suspect in her husband's murder. She says she
02:17:06
needed money for the business in the following weeks, and it didn't help when she tried to cash in his milliondoll
02:17:12
life insurance policy. I was the only beneficiary. That could only mean that they suspected me. Let me just ask, did
02:17:20
you have anything to do with this? Absolutely not. But Amy Meredith says Corey had started raising red flags
02:17:28
immediately after leaving the scene. Within hours of the murder, she reportedly stated there would be no
02:17:34
funeral and inquired about having the house cleaned. We had to make sure that she did not have any involvement.
02:17:41
But Cory wasn't the only member of Ted's family who was raising suspicion. The Shaughnessy son, Nick,
02:17:48
had been more than a 100 miles away at the time of the murder. At the scene that morning, he'd been emotional. But
02:17:55
what struck Detective was one of Nick's first questions. I tell him, "It looks like
02:18:01
somebody came into the home and shot your dad to death." And how did he absorb that news? He asked
02:18:10
me, "Did he suffer?" Was that an odd question? It definitely struck me as odd. Yes. Even more so, police say,
02:18:20
because as the morning wore on, Nick became much less interested in speaking with police than with the reporters who
02:18:27
had started showing up. Nick and Jackie continuously tried to talk to the media.
02:18:33
We asked him to to stop and to stay in the scene. And then Nick did something really odd, says Detective Moore. He
02:18:41
walked directly over to examine that ground floor wide open side window. The room it led to had once been his. Him
02:18:51
going to that side of the house to look specifically at that window, which you can't see from just the front of the
02:18:58
house. So for him to know that that was even involved, he did not have that information. How does he know the entry
02:19:06
point unless he was involved in creating the entry point? Sometimes people will get information from cross talk with
02:19:14
detectives or law enforcement. And so I I didn't automatically get super suspicious, but
02:19:21
it was catching my attention. Something on Nick's phone had caught their attention as well. An app that
02:19:28
gave him access to his parents' alarm. Cory told them the family often chose not to arm the system and that it had
02:19:36
been switched off that night, but authorities noticed something in the account history. There was an activation
02:19:43
for an open window. The time of the window being opened was 4:27 that morning. Following that was glass break
02:19:55
activations. We believe that's when the bullets started breaking the glass in the house. That's when Ted died. That's
02:20:01
when the shots were being fired. Was this important to have? Extremely. Police also saw something that seemed
02:20:09
important in Jackie Edison's behavior. We were going to do gunshot residue tests on their hands. We then separated
02:20:17
them. And at that time, Jackie broke down hysterically. And what' you make of it? That was a major red flag for me. We
02:20:26
knew there was something more to this at that point. A woman officer put your mom
02:20:31
on the phone and then your mom told you what happened? Yeah. She's like someone came in the
02:20:38
house. There was an exchange of gunfire. I believe she fired a shot and then she
02:20:44
ran to the closet. In questioning later that day, Nick and Jackie reminded police
02:20:50
they'd been at their home in College Station when the shooting happened. We both moved to College Station and he
02:20:57
just works from home. A few days later, investigators got a search warrant. Once we get in the
02:21:04
apartment, we're going through it. We're finding ammunition. Though common among gun owners, the
02:21:09
ammunition was the same brand and caliber that was found at the crime scene. And investigators were about to
02:21:16
find proof the couple was keeping secrets. We find a marriage certificate for Nick and Jacqueline. You discovered
02:21:25
that Nick and Jackie were married by searching Nick's apartment. No. In all of the conversation you were having,
02:21:32
they never said that they were married. No. Never. A teenage friend of Nick's named Spencer Patterson. Spencer
02:21:39
Patterson. Who'd been certified as a minister online had married them eight months earlier. Police weren't the only
02:21:47
ones surprised. You and Ted never knew? No. Corey Shaughnessy says Nick and Jackie didn't tell her about their
02:21:56
clandestine marriage until after the murder. And I told him, I said, "This is not, you shouldn't have done this.
02:22:03
You're too young." Trying to be a good mom, she says she promised to help them plan a proper wedding. I said, "You need
02:22:10
to do it the right way." Corey had ample opportunity to make sure it happened because over the next few
02:22:18
days, Nick and Jackie moved back into her house. We were planning the engagement party. We had the guest list.
02:22:27
Jackie was picking out invitations. That's especially chilling because while police initially had looked at all three
02:22:35
for the murder, they now suspected just two. and that Nick and Jackie had also targeted
02:22:43
Corey, but it was still only a working theory. You can't say anything to Corey. No. That that's a hard line to walk. If
02:22:53
you have two people who planned her killing now living with her, are you worried about Cory's safety? Of course.
02:23:01
Of course. But Corey Shaughnessy says what worried her was the possibility authorities were trying to frame her son
02:23:09
who by now was working in his father's place at the jewelry store. There is a set of circumstances that the police are
02:23:16
trying to to to make work in the easiest way that they can. On March 10th, 2018,
02:23:24
she hired her son the best defense attorney she could find. You could have told me aliens landed on the front yard
02:23:31
and I would have believed that before I would have believed that Nicholas and Jackie plan to have us killed.
02:23:50
[Music] Corey Shaughnessy knew police were suspicious of Nick and Jackie, but she
02:24:03
says she had no reason to think they were right. After all, she says, "I don't know. They've been wrong about
02:24:11
her. The last thing that I would ever do would be kill my husband." And I thought, "Well, if they
02:24:17
think I did it, it's not a stretch for them to think Nicholas did it." But the closer police looked, the more
02:24:24
incriminating evidence they seemed to find that Nick and Jackie had planned to have both Shaughnessies killed. While
02:24:31
phone records showed Nick had been more than a 100 miles away at the time of the
02:24:36
murder. They also showed he was lying when he said he hadn't been to Austin for a month. We ultimately see cell
02:24:45
phone usage in Austin on February 28th, which is just Two days before Ted ends up getting killed,
02:24:55
investigators wondered if he had been in town making final preparations, there were text messages on Nick and Jackie's
02:25:02
phones that police say showed a suspicious conversation. How important was the text message that he sent out
02:25:09
February 23, 24, Nick is saying he's working on it? And Jackie's response to the text message was, "Do they want 50k
02:25:19
or not?" and she says, "We can't afford to pay half before." In another exchange, Nick asks her to
02:25:26
withdraw money from her account. Quote, "So if it happens, cash in hand, they do
02:25:33
make this withdrawal." Jackie withdrew $1,000 from the bank just days before the murder. Authorities
02:25:41
suspected it was no coincidence. Then in May of 2018, they talked to the man who had officiated Nick and Jackie's
02:25:50
wedding. That high school friend, Spencer Patterson. Trying to get a hold of Spencer was kind of difficult.
02:25:58
At first, investigators believed Patterson might be a suspect, but when they finally reached him, he proved to
02:26:05
be a critical witness instead. He told them just before the murder, Nick had talked about coming into $8
02:26:13
million with Ted and Corey gone. Nick had put a dollar sign on the lives of his parents. Yes, that's chilling. It
02:26:23
is. Patterson showed them text messages that were even more chilling. There was also
02:26:29
communication between Spencer and Nicholas, but Nicholas was trying to hire him to kill a family. Just walk in
02:26:37
and shoot a family, writes Nick. Steal all their no mask needed cuz they'll all be dead. Spencer didn't want to go along
02:26:46
with it, but Nick still pitched the idea. Police cleared Patterson and on May 29th, 2018, they arrested Nick
02:26:56
Shaughnessy and Jackie Edison for criminal solicitation. Cory couldn't believe it.
02:27:03
I'm still under the assumption that he's being wrongly accused. For months, Corey had stood by Nick, but
02:27:12
she told us when she read the arrest affidavit and saw the evidence, her rocksolid belief in his innocence began
02:27:20
to crumble. I got to where I understood that yes, they were involved in some way. But as a mother, she says she still
02:27:28
couldn't convince herself they'd deliberately tried to kill anyone. I was then hoping that they had maybe gotten
02:27:36
caught up in something in College Station where maybe Nicholas owed someone money or maybe there was some
02:27:41
sort of a strange drug thing or maybe he told the wrong person that we were jewelers.
02:27:46
Confident Nick and Jackie were behind the attack, police hoped some time in jail might make them come clean about
02:27:54
who had actually pulled the trigger. For the moment, though, neither one was talking. The next step was who were the
02:28:02
actual shooters and how do we figure this out? The evidence trail had essentially run cold. So, we kind of hit
02:28:08
a stall point when in early July, 4 months after the murder, Detective Moore decided to review some security video
02:28:17
from Nick and Jackie's porch recorded just 2 days before the attack. I see two individuals show up to his front door.
02:28:27
Moore says he noticed something about one of the men that made him freeze the video. something he was wearing a green
02:28:34
Anderson t-shirt. Window company. A window company. This feels like a break. And it only happens because you isolated
02:28:43
a frame of the video from the security camera. Yeah. He and drove to the window company where their hard work ran into
02:28:52
more good luck. By sheer coincidence, an employes's daughter said she'd actually
02:28:59
met the man in the freeze frame. Apparently, he'd only worked there for a few days, four years earlier, and this
02:29:06
woman still remembered his name. Sergeant, what are the odds of a hit like this on the identity? It was crazy
02:29:14
that we we got that break. His name was Cameron Vosmeck, and he wasn't home that
02:29:20
day, but his wife answered the door and quickly got their attention. I know why you're here. that kid who hired
02:29:30
somebody to to kill his jewelry store parents. Hang on. She doesn't know who you guys are.
02:29:38
You identify yourselves as detectives and she says, "I know why you're here." Yes.
02:29:45
She said a few months earlier a man named Johnny Leon had asked her husband to commit murder for money, but he
02:29:52
turned him down. Police ruled out Vosmeck as a suspect, but Leon turned out to be the other person in the
02:30:00
security video from Nick and Jackie's porch. When they brought him in for questioning,
02:30:07
he told them he was no murderer, but he admitted Nick had tried to hire him. I'm
02:30:13
not going to lie to you. If someone offers you 100K, you're going to think about it. He's luring you into this to
02:30:19
commit murder. Police were convinced that Leon had taken the bait. I'm just telling you, we
02:30:27
know you're involved in this. We know what happened. You know, I'm involved. Absolutely. There's no doubt.
02:30:36
Leon was arrested for a capital murder. And on his phone, police found evidence he may not have acted alone. There was a
02:30:44
flurry of contacts around the time of the killing with a Fort Worth man named Arian Smith.
02:30:51
They also discovered both men had arrest records. In fact, the two had been arrested together for drugs a year
02:30:59
earlier. Detective Moore and I interviewed him. He did admit that he had met Nick. He gave us a lot of good
02:31:07
information. Smith opened up about the details of that night and broke down in the
02:31:13
process. You're the only person showing regret. I don't understand how how could
02:31:18
you kill somebody and not have any emotion about it and you actually killed him. I was just in the situation. I'm
02:31:24
I'm I'm devastated. I cannot sleep at night. Prosecutors were closer than ever to having everything they needed to make
02:31:32
their case. We've got enough now. Let's go to trial. Something Nick Shaughnessy told us he'd
02:31:41
wanted to avoid. Did you pay these two men to go kill your parents? After police arrested the last of their
02:32:05
four suspects, Aryan Smith, Detective Salo says Smith told them he wasn't just there for Ted's murder. Yes, I was
02:32:14
there. He acknowledged firing the fatal shot and then made a stunning request. I
02:32:22
request the death penalty. the death penalty. I killed somebody. I deserve to die. What is that? He also told police
02:32:32
where to find the murder weapon. It was the 40 caliber pistol missing from that box they'd found in Nick's old bedroom.
02:32:40
The 40 caliber gun that killed Ted was Ted's. Yes. For a mother who'd struggled for months
02:32:48
to keep faith in her son, it felt like the last straw. Too much had happened that pointed to Nicholas and Jackie
02:32:57
having involvement. And Corey was horrified to realize she'd spent months sheltering the very people
02:33:04
who'd planned to have Ted and her murdered that night. What a chilling thought. Two people who tried to have
02:33:12
you killed and they're living in your home. Very It's very chilling. I bought all the groceries. I paid all the bills.
02:33:19
I bought her clothing. This is diabolical. Absolutely. They thought they had gotten away with it. Do you Do
02:33:26
you prefer Jackie or Jacqueline or Jackie? But after their arrest, it took just a couple of weeks for Jackie to
02:33:33
blame Nick. Did Nicholas hire somebody to kill his parents? Yeah. And Jackie seemed to know why he'd done
02:33:42
it. She says Nick was in desperate financial straits with a failing day trading business and thousands in
02:33:50
overdue loans, including at least one from Corey. I think his mom gave him $30,000 and she expected money in
02:34:01
return, but he wasn't paying her. After her cooperation, authorities released Jackie on a reduced bond and prosecutor
02:34:10
Amy Meredith resolved to go after Nick for the maximum. We're going to try Nicholas Shaughnessy for capital murder.
02:34:20
At this point, were you prepared to testify against Nick? Yes. Nick Shaughnessy and the two alleged
02:34:28
hitmen were charged with capital murder. But by the spring of 2021, Amy Meredith
02:34:35
had left her job as assistant district attorney. And there was a new DA, Joseé Garza, whose office made the men an
02:34:44
offer, avoid a possible death sentence by pleading guilty to a reduced charge of murder, and served 35 years with the
02:34:53
possibility of parole. Leon and Smith agreed, and Cy wrote to Nick to suggest he do the same.
02:35:02
If I could speak to Ted, I think that would have been his choice. Nick Shaughnessy accepted the deal. He
02:35:11
could be released when he's 36. In the summer of 2023, we visited him in prison near Houston. Did you hire people to go
02:35:21
kill your parents? Yes, Jackie and I participated in multiple aspects to Never mind. Participated in multiple
02:35:30
aspects. Did you pay these two men to go kill your parents? Yes. Nick told us he's sorry for all of it. I know that
02:35:40
I'm here because of those actions. Nick, at the end of the day, are you sorry for
02:35:44
what you did or are you sorry that you got caught? I'm most truly passionately sorry for what I did. And Nick told us
02:35:53
he never would have done it if not for Jackie. It was a very toxic relationship. Although he stood to
02:36:00
inherit his parents' money eventually, he told us he wasn't prepared to wait. Were you at all thinking, "What am I
02:36:09
doing?" Of course, it was always in the back of my head like red flags like, "Stop. Don't go." The back of your head.
02:36:16
Yeah. Why not the front of your head? I guess the the the validation or approval
02:36:23
from Jackie. It is hard to know how much Jackie Edison should be blamed or what punishment she deserves. And jurors
02:36:32
won't get to decide. She too got a deal from the office of the new DA for pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit
02:36:40
capital murder by terror threat or other felony. a jail sentence of 120 days and
02:36:47
10 years probation. It's it's astounding. It's absolutely astounding. She began serving her time in June of
02:36:54
2023. It is an outright dismissal of everything that I went through as a victim and it's a dismissal of Ted's
02:37:01
life. Three are doing 35 years. One is doing 120 days. Cory says that's outrageous.
02:37:12
What are your thoughts? I had no involvement once I left the district attorney's office on Jackie's case. Amy
02:37:18
Meredith was working elsewhere before prosecutors offered the plea deals. Cory's feelings aren't lost on her. Do
02:37:27
you understand her rage? I I absolutely understand that she is upset. Cory is so upset that when the new
02:37:36
prosecutors asked her to appear at Jackie's 2023 plea hearing, she refused. Instead, recording this video at home to
02:37:45
be played in court. I'm alive because your plan to have me murdered didn't succeed. You are a
02:37:53
monster. You are evil and everyone needs to know it. You knew what was about to happen and
02:38:02
yet you sat home and did nothing because you wanted it to happen. We wanted to ask Jackie Edison about that and other
02:38:11
things, but she declined our request for an interview. On the day she was released from jail, our producer, Jenna
02:38:18
Jackson, approached her. Hey, Jacqueline. What do you make of Nick Shaughnessy's
02:38:28
apology? See more evidence from the case at 48 [Music] hours.com. Cory and Nick Shaughnessy haven't spoken directly
02:38:50
since his 2018 arrest. When you look in the mirror, do you see evil? My mom stated that me being evil,
02:38:59
I don't see evil in me. And these days, it's safe to say they don't see eye to eye. In fact, there may be only one
02:39:09
thing they do agree on. Jackie is not a victim. This is a 50/50 thing. Most definitely. Did Jacine Edison get away
02:39:18
with murder? Absolutely. On October 17th, 2023, Jackie Edison walked out of an Austin area
02:39:28
jail after serving her 4 month sentence. Hey, Jacqueline. We've been asking for an interview for months. I don't want to
02:39:36
do any interviews. But our producer, Jenna Jackson, had some questions for her anyway. Nick got 35 years. The
02:39:43
hitman got the same. You got 120 days. Are you getting away with murder? No. I think that I think that it's fair.
02:39:54
I think it accurately reflects the level of involvement. Corey and Nick have both told us is that
02:40:02
you were your partner in this murder plot. Yeah, I think Nick is is saying whatever he has to say to
02:40:09
kind of clear his name. Um, and Corey is very much in denial about what really happened. You weren't in on this plot
02:40:19
and Not in didn't get money out to pay the hitman. No, man. Is she innocent? OB, absolutely not. No,
02:40:28
she knew. She knew what he was trying to do. She could have stopped this at any time. I tried to stop him.
02:40:36
But investigators say there is no evidence Jackie ever tried to stop the murder. She's no princess in this. And
02:40:44
according to what Nick told authorities, Jackie had been making plans for spending the Shaughnessy's money. I
02:40:51
found out that Jackie had already picked out the car she was going to buy her mother with the money that they made off
02:40:57
of the murder of you and Ted. Yes. I'm not defending her to by any degree. Though she did eventually help them make
02:41:05
their case against the person they identified as the key culprit. They're both to blame. Who took more action?
02:41:13
It's Nick. You take Nick out of this, you don't have the incident. You take Jackie out. Still happens.
02:41:23
Do you understand Cory's frustration? I do. Absolutely. We empathize with her. But Mo and Salo say Jackie's plea deal
02:41:33
wasn't their call. Our job ended at the arrest, and there's not a single step further that we can take it.
02:41:41
We wanted to ask DA Joseé Garza exactly why Jackie Edison got 120 days after the
02:41:48
other three got 35 years, but he wouldn't agree to an interview. A district attorney spokesperson sent us a
02:41:56
statement saying, quote, "Our office takes acts of violence seriously and is committed to holding people who commit
02:42:03
violent crimes accountable." The statement also said Edison is on 10 years probation and if she violates the
02:42:11
terms, she could face 20 years in prison. Cory Shaughnessy says a full explanation from authorities would have
02:42:19
helped her make sense of something that has always struck her as impossibly wrong. So, no one's ever explained to
02:42:26
you why this enormous disparity in sentence? No, absolutely not. It's a slap in the face to my mother. Now
02:42:36
you're concerned about your mother? Most definitely. True or not, Nick Shaughnessy told us he
02:42:44
hopes someday Corey will agree to speak with him. What would you say to her? I wish I could tell my mom how truly
02:42:54
sorry I am that this is not something I'm proud of and I failed her as a son. It means nothing to me. Do you think he
02:43:06
believes it? What he's saying? I don't know that person. I have no idea who Nicholas Shaughnessy is.
02:43:18
And Corey says there is no point responding to an apology she was never meant to hear. In
02:43:25
my mind, I am supposed to be dead, and so I'm a ghost, and ghosts can't speak. But even after a betrayal no mother
02:43:36
should ever have to see, Corey still can't bring herself to condemn her son altogether. Do you still love your son?
02:43:45
I love the person I knew to be my son before this happened. You love that 8-year-old boy racing cars with his dad?
02:43:53
Yes. She knows that boy is gone forever. And so is the life she and Ted tried to
02:43:59
build around him. Nicholas and Jackie destroyed my entire world. They took my husband. They took memories. They took
02:44:12
my business. They took everything I had that I cared about. But now living out of state under a
02:44:20
different name, Corey is determined to make the most of every day. It'll always be
02:44:29
there. It'll always be a part of who I am, but I've been given life and I need to do something with it.
02:44:53
As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. But did
02:44:59
you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? Listen to Candyman, the true story
02:45:05
behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. You've probably heard of the NCIS from the hit
02:45:10
TV series, but we're about to take you inside its real life work. Listen to 48 hours NCIS early and adree on the 48
02:45:19
hours plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. [Music] You have a prepaid call from Lyall Menendez. My name is Lyall
02:45:42
Mendez. I'm at RJ Donovan State Prison in San Diego, California, and I am here for killing my parents. My brother and I
02:45:52
were convicted together. Firstde murder verdicts for both Eric and Lyall Menendez. Excuse us. And this is a
02:45:58
special report from the Van Ice Courthouse. Both Menendez brothers have been found guilty. How big a deal was
02:46:04
the Menendez case? Well, when you think back, it was huge. The Menendez family was very wealthy. This was Beverly
02:46:10
Hills. Murders just don't typically happen. Kitty was my baby sister. There was a brutal murder.
02:46:20
Everyone from the gardener to the president had a view of what happened. I'm Jackie Lacy. I'm the former elected
02:46:30
district attorney of Los Angeles County. A couple was sitting around watching TV
02:46:37
when their adult sons came in with shotguns and slaughtered them. What did these parents do to deserve them? There
02:46:48
must be a reason. It's just never been a kid of guilt for innocence. It was always about why it happened.
02:46:56
Jose Menendez was the self-made millionaire. It was very driven, very demanding. The prosecution's theory was
02:47:03
they got tired of their lives being micromanaged. They wanted to spend the money the way they wanted to spend the
02:47:10
money. They were buying Rolex watches. They were buying real estate. The way that they acted was not like, "Oh my
02:47:18
goodness, my parents are dead." It was soulless. It was strictly greed from day one. You believe they wanted a portion
02:47:27
of the money. They wanted it all. [Music] My name is Cliff Gardner. I represent Eric and Lyall
02:47:41
Menendez. It's not a complex case. It's a simple case. And they were abused their whole life. My dad had been
02:47:48
molesting me. He raped me. Did you ask him not to? Yes. The brothers were claiming that we
02:47:57
were molested by our father. When we threatened to go public, they threatened to kill us. And so we had to go in and
02:48:03
kill them before they killed us. I thought he was going to kill me that night. I never saw anything in the home.
02:48:10
Never. I have got to think that it was their attorney's ideas that if your only way you're going to save your ass is to
02:48:17
say that you were molested and that's what they did. It's divided the family immensely. I love my cousins. They
02:48:23
shouldn't have gone through what they went through. They're not lying. They were being abused.
02:48:28
As you sit there in prison, there is some news now that could really impact you and your brother's case, right? Yes.
02:48:37
It's pretty just sort of shocking. Former Manudo singer Roy Relo claims he was drugged and raped by Jose Menendez
02:48:46
in the mid 80s. Manudo had just signed with RCA Records where Menendez was a top executive. We now have evidence that
02:48:54
makes absolutely clear that those boys were molested and if those boys were molested, it would have been
02:48:59
manslaughter and they would be out. The judge in this case, if he finds that the new evidence is credible and the
02:49:06
conviction should be vacated, do you think the DA's office would seek a new trial? I think they would spend a lot of
02:49:13
time thinking about it. 34 years of incarceration. You wonder when will there be a fair review of
02:49:20
this? So maybe now. My hope in the case is that they'll finally walk out of prison.
02:49:28
[Music] [Music] Lyall and Eric Mendez have been behind bars in California for more than three
02:50:16
decades for the 1989 killing of their parents, Jose and Kitty Mendez. convicted of firstdegree murder and
02:50:24
sentenced to life in prison. I really can't comment. You say anything at all in a case that captured the nation's
02:50:30
attention and guide me. They had no hope of ever walking free, but new evidence may change that. Eric chose not to speak
02:50:39
with us for this broadcast, but Lyall did. You have a prepaid call from Lyall Mendez. This call and your telephone
02:50:48
number will be monitored and recorded. Hi, Lyall. Can you hear me? Hi. Yeah, I can hear you. What did you think when
02:50:55
you heard about these new claims and evidence? I mean, for me, I just was happy just a burden to be telling what
02:51:05
happened to and just have so much doubt in the public air. The question is not whether the Menendez brothers killed
02:51:12
their parents. They admit that they did. Instead, the focus of the case has long
02:51:18
been why they did it. They insist that they killed out of fear and in self-defense after a lifetime of
02:51:26
physical, emotional, and sexual abuse suffered at the hands of their parents. One of their lawyers, Cliff Gardner,
02:51:33
says the new evidence corroborates those claims and lessens their culpability. If
02:51:38
the judge finds this evidence credible, I think it is sufficient to give them a new trial.
02:51:44
But to understand how we got here, we have to go back to the beginning. The evening of August 20th, 1989, when Lyall
02:51:53
Menendez made this call to 911 from the family's Beverly Hills mansion. Beverly Hills emergency. Yes, please. Uh, what's
02:52:03
the problem? Someone tell my parents. Pardon me? So after officers responded to the scene,
02:52:11
then 21-year-old Lyall and 18-year-old Eric reported that they had arrived home to find their parents shot to death in
02:52:19
the family room. Jackie Lacy was a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles at the time. I think one of the Beverly
02:52:26
Hills detective described it as one of the most brutal crime scene he had ever seen in his life. I've been in this
02:52:33
business for over 33 years and I've heard of very few murders that were more savage than this one was. Jose Mendez, a
02:52:40
former top executive at RCA Records and his wife Kitty had been shot multiple times at close range with a shotgun. It
02:52:50
was an expression of hatred for these two people. And that was the last time I saw her alive. Milton Anderson, Kitty's
02:53:00
older brother, still remembers receiving the news. My brother called me and he said that Kitty and Jose were were dead.
02:53:08
I loved her. Sister Kitty was a very ambitious girl. She was a very beautiful woman.
02:53:17
Kitty and Jose met when they were in college in Illinois. Jose had come to the US from Cuba. They went on to marry
02:53:25
and start a family. Lyall and Eric were their only children. Over the years, with Kitty by his side, Jose excelled in
02:53:34
his career, working for RCA Records, among other major companies. He was going right up the ladder without any
02:53:42
hesitation. At the time of his death, Jose was working for a film studio running their home video division.
02:53:49
Investigators initially suspected that the killings may have been tied to his business dealings. Lyall sort of
02:53:56
indicated, you know, my dad dealt with shady characters. And once you say something like that, detectives are
02:54:02
going to start to look at, okay, what were his business contacts? Family members and investigators wondered
02:54:08
whether it may have been mafia related. At the time, the home video industry was
02:54:13
known for having ties to the mob. Everybody said it was a mob hit because it was so brutal. It It really was like
02:54:20
a scene out of the Godfather movies. Initially, Lyall and Eric Mendez were not even on investigators radar. They
02:54:27
didn't do any gunshot residue test on their hands. They let him go back and get evidence without even thinking,
02:54:34
"Hey, could it have been the kids, but they didn't stay off investigators radar for long. Their behavior in the wake of
02:54:41
the crime eventually drew scrutiny. The brothers appeared to be spending their parents' money, and lots of it. They
02:54:49
were investing in businesses. They acted like they had won the lottery. And their
02:54:56
behavior at their parents' memorial services raised some eyebrows. At the podium, Lyall read a letter from Jose
02:55:04
that was filled with love and pride for his sons. Did you see Lyall get emotional as he was reading that letter?
02:55:12
No. Lyall also made a statement that his father always said, "You can never fill
02:55:16
my shoes." and he jokingly said, "Guess what? I'm wearing my father's shoes today." struck you as
02:55:26
odd that he would say something like that. I was very odd. While all that may have seemed unusual, it wasn't hard
02:55:34
evidence. But then about 6 months later, police got a tip from an unlikely source. the girlfriend of a psychologist
02:55:43
who Lyall and Eric Mendez had been talking to. She told police that the brothers had confessed to the killings
02:55:51
in therapy and there was an audio taped recording of it. But for that confession, who knows whether they would
02:55:57
ever been caught. On March 8th, 1990, after police got their hands on that tape, Lyall Mendez was taken into
02:56:04
custody. Eric Menendez, who was out of the country at the time, surrendered to police days later. Not many Hollywood
02:56:12
murder mysteries ever took a more dramatic turn than police are describing in a couple of savage Beverly Hills
02:56:18
killings. Police say the motive was apparently money, a $14 million inheritance to be shared by the
02:56:23
brothers. But years later, when the case made its way to trial, the brothers would make it
02:56:30
clear that it might not be so simple. In August 20th, 1989, did you and your brother kill your
02:56:38
mother and father? Why did you kill your parents? Cuz we were afraid. [Music] In the summer of 1993, nearly 4 years
02:57:04
after Jose and Kitty Mendez were gunned down in their home, their sons, Lyall and Eric Mendez
02:57:12
went on trial, they face the death penalty. Good afternoon. The only question in this case is why
02:57:23
did these killings occur. Why they were killed is what the focus of all of our evidence will be on. What the defense
02:57:31
was arguing was that since this was a self-defense case, the brothers were deserving of a lesser charge and
02:57:37
punishment. The defense attorneys who tried the case didn't respond to our request for an interview. Cliff Gardner
02:57:44
represents Lyall and Eric Mendez today. They had the defense of imperfect self-defense.
02:57:50
Imperfect self-defense meaning the brothers honestly believe that they had to take action to save their lives even
02:57:58
though it might not seem rational. And if it's honest but unreasonable, you are capable of manslaughter, not of murder.
02:58:05
Both brothers took the stand. Ly Mendez spoke of sexual abuse at the hands of his mother and father. He said his
02:58:12
father began sexually abusing him when he was only 6 years old. He would uh fondle me and he would ask me to do the
02:58:22
same with him. Over time, he said it became worse. He raped me. But while Lyall said his
02:58:30
father stopped sexually abusing him when he was eight, Eric said it never ended for him and that he finally confided in
02:58:38
his older brother days before the crime at age 18. I didn't know what to do at the time, so I figured I'd tell Lyall
02:58:46
and maybe he could help me. He started telling me that one of the reasons he had never told me before was cuz my dad
02:58:52
had always threatened his life. The brothers testified that Lyall soon confronted their parents and that their
02:58:59
mother indicated she knew about the abuse all along. In anger, Lyall said he directed a threat at his father. I told
02:59:07
him that I would tell everybody. Then he said, "We all make choices in life, son. Eric made his. You've made yours."
02:59:15
What did you think was going to happen? I thought we were in danger. I thought he had no He felt he had no choice.
02:59:24
But to what? That he would kill us. The brothers testified that they got into another argument with their parents on
02:59:32
the night of the crime and that they believed their parents were about to kill them to keep the family secret from
02:59:39
coming out. So they said they grabbed shotguns that they had bought two days earlier for protection, went into the
02:59:47
family room, and started shooting their parents. at one point even stopping to reload. And what did you do after you
03:00:10
reloaded? I ran around and shot my mom. The defense may call us next witness. To
03:00:17
bolster their claims of abuse, the defense called to the stand numerous relatives, friends, and acquaintances of
03:00:24
the family who described incidents of physical and emotional abuse that they said they observed. Alan Anderson, Lyall
03:00:32
and Eric's cousin, was one of those witnesses. Growing up, Allan would spend summers at the Menendez home. He had a
03:00:39
lot to say about Jose hitting the kids with the belt. Never had a problem with that. and Kitty. She wouldn't get up to
03:00:46
consult the children. Nothing. While none of the witnesses, including Allan, ever saw Lyall or Eric Mendez being
03:00:54
sexually abused, Allan did recall something that struck him as odd. Jose would tell the boys in the bedroom and
03:01:02
then he would close the door and then he'd take showers with him. He says during that time, Kitty wouldn't let him
03:01:08
go near the room. So, I was not allowed while the boys were alone with Jose with
03:01:14
the door closed in the master bedroom to go down the hall to probably not hear whatever I may hear. Another cousin,
03:01:23
Diane Vandermull, gave similar testimony, and she also recounted a conversation she says she had with Lyall
03:01:30
when he was eight. Um, he proceeded to indicate to me by touching himself uh down and and saying that his dad and
03:01:42
him had been touching each other down there. And what did you do? I went and got Kitty and uh told her what was going
03:01:50
on. And what happened when Kitty came down? She didn't believe me. Andy Cano, yet another cousin, also took the stand
03:01:59
and testified about a conversation he says he had with Eric when Eric was about 13.
03:02:06
He told me his father was massaging his he told me never to reveal it to anybody. Still, prosecutors argued that
03:02:15
even if Lyall and Eric Mendez were abused, it doesn't give them the right to kill. And they pointed out that when
03:02:22
the brothers confessed to that psychologist, they never mentioned abuse or self-defense. Then the timing of
03:02:30
disclosure was convenient. The prosecutors who tried the case didn't respond to our request for an interview.
03:02:37
Former Los Angeles County DA Jackie Lacy reviewed portions of the trial at our request. And people do make things up
03:02:45
when their life is on the line. But all these years later, Lyall Mendez maintains they are telling the truth.
03:02:56
And the reason they didn't come forward then was complicated. What was holding you back? Just shame. Just not wanting
03:03:05
it to be public. The pure nature of the crime, however, says Lacy doesn't support the brother's claim that they
03:03:12
acted in self-defense. Prosecutors pointed out that Jose and Kitty were watching TV at the time they were killed
03:03:20
and they weren't armed. In order to get close enough to blow somebody away, you would have been able to see that they
03:03:28
didn't have weapons. Ly Mendez is adamant that he and his brother were in fear for their lives. For me, it was
03:03:37
just dark and confusing and total belief that there was danger. You know, it's fight or flight to a degree. It was
03:03:47
panic. The prosecution argued the evidence proves the killings were premeditated. When the brothers
03:03:54
purchased those shotguns, prosecutors said that they took steps to cover their tracks, like driving to a gun store all
03:04:02
the way in San Diego. San Diego is not a round the corner drive. Last time I checked, it was two
03:04:09
hours sometimes. After they killed their parents, they went around and picked up
03:04:14
the expended shotgun shell casings so that their fingerprints wouldn't be discovered on those shelves. There was a
03:04:24
lot of thought and a lot of deliberation that went into it. They also got rid of
03:04:29
the shotguns, made that 911 call. Who is the person that was shot? My mom and my
03:04:36
dad. and misled the initial investigators. Prosecutors pointed to money as the motive. They said Jose
03:04:45
Mendez told his sons he had removed them from his will and based on their investigation, they suggested that after
03:04:53
the crime, Lyall Mendez attempted to destroy a will on the family computer. Lyle denies doing that and insists money
03:05:02
had nothing to do with what happened. If there was a new will, it was never found. We never had any financial
03:05:10
problems with my parents. Although the brothers were tried together, there were two separate juries deciding their fate.
03:05:18
When deliberations began, they stretched on for weeks before both juries determined they were divided over
03:05:25
whether Lyall and Eric Mendez should be convicted of murder or manslaughter. Therefore, I find that the jury is
03:05:33
hopelessly deadlocked. A mistrial was declared. It was just a devastating result. I
03:05:41
needed it to be over one way or the other, but it was far from over. Prosecutors would try the case again.
03:05:49
They needed a win. The heat was on. [Music] [Music] Nearly two years passed as Lyall and
03:06:11
Eric Mendez sat in jail, awaiting a second trial. Some of their family members, like Alan Anderson, believed
03:06:19
that they were justified in the killings. I know they did what they did because they were in fear of their life.
03:06:25
While others, like Kitty's brother, Milton Anderson, considered them coldblooded killers. I don't believe
03:06:32
that Jose or Kitty would do any of the things that they were accused of. Jose was changing his will and that's when
03:06:39
they went out and bought the shotguns. At the retrial, which began in October 1995, one jury instead of two would hear
03:06:47
the case. No video cameras were allowed in court and a new team of prosecutors would employ a different strategy. The
03:06:54
first trial was okay, there may have been abuse, but we don't allow vigilantes in our society. The second
03:06:59
trial, the prosecution's case, there was no abuse at all. And what made it easier
03:07:03
for prosecutors to argue that, says attorney Cliff Gardner, is the fact that the prosecution raised new and
03:07:10
successful objections to the admission of a large amount of defense evidence. Now, the jury would hear from only some,
03:07:18
not all, of the witnesses who knew the Menendez family and helped corroborate the brother's claims of abuse. The DA
03:07:26
was not going to take another loss. they could not take another loss. The judge who had also presided over the first
03:07:33
trial excluded the testimony on the grounds that it was irrelevant, repetitive, and in some instances
03:07:40
lacking in foundation because this time Lyall Menendez would not take the stand.
03:07:47
Eric did testify. Why did you decide not to speak? Uh for two reasons. I was just
03:07:54
done after the first trial and I didn't have the attorney that I trusted so much
03:07:58
to ask me these deep personal questions. But Carol Nahara, the only surviving lead prosecutor from the second trial
03:08:05
who declined to speak with us, suggested in a 1996 interview there might have been another reason why Lyall didn't
03:08:13
take the stand. There were things that had been developed since the first trial that would have damaged his credibility
03:08:20
a great deal. Prosecutors said they had new evidence that Lyall had asked a friend and a former girlfriend to
03:08:28
fabricate testimony. Lyall admits to 48 Hours that he did do that, but says he later withdrew those requests.
03:08:38
Because Lyall didn't take the stand, his cousin Diane Vandermolan was prohibited
03:08:42
from testifying about that conversation she says she had with Lyall when he was eight, in which she says Lyall told her
03:08:49
that his father was touching him. The jury did still hear from cousin Andy Cano about that similar conversation he
03:08:57
claimed to have had with a 13-year-old Eric, but the prosecution attacked his credibility. The state's position was
03:09:04
that Andy was a liar. And when cousin Alan Anderson took the stand, prosecutors attacked his credibility,
03:09:11
too, bringing up the fact that Lyall Menendez gave him money after the crime. Anderson says it was to help pay for a
03:09:19
medical procedure. He didn't say anything like, "Well, if I go to court, you know, or no, he it was just straight
03:09:26
up between him and I, him being a nice cousin, knowing I was in financial bind, he knew he had the resources to help
03:09:33
me." At the second trial, prosecutors placed more of a focus on the brutality of the crime, and they painted Jose as a
03:09:41
restrained, loving father, someone incapable of molesting his children. Prosecutors referred to the brother's
03:09:48
defense as the abuse excuse. In the first trial, the defense called more than 50 witnesses. This
03:09:56
time, they called about half. It wasn't that they didn't want to present them. They were not allowed.
03:10:02
The jury deliberated for days and then the verdicts are in in the retrial of Eric and Lyall Mendez.
03:10:11
Guilty of firstdegree murder. I hugged my brother. We cried and I said, "Look, we're going to be okay." I
03:10:19
was not happy at all. At the jury's recommendation, the brothers were sentenced to life in prison without the
03:10:27
possibility of parole. And you believe they deserved that? Oh, what they did to my sister, they should
03:10:34
have gotten a death penalty. Lyall and Eric Mendez were sent to separate prisons. More than two decades
03:10:42
passed. And then around 2020, the case made a surprising resurgence on social media. Following a documentary that
03:10:52
aired on the case in which Eric Menendez repeated his claims of abuse, droves of
03:10:58
people took to Tik Tok and Instagram to express support for him and his brother.
03:11:03
Dr. Judy Hoe is a neurossychologist who specializes in childhood sex abuse trauma. Dr. Ho is also a 48 hours
03:11:12
consultant. We asked her to review the case. I definitely think that our society has just become more
03:11:19
knowledgeable about trauma and the impact of sexual trauma. Dr. Ho says research shows that just because the
03:11:26
brothers delayed reporting abuse, it doesn't mean they made it up. That's all very consistent with people who have
03:11:33
been through trauma and maybe feel like it was even their own fault in some ways
03:11:37
or they're ashamed of the trauma. and there's a lot more self-stigma and shame associated with male victims. She also
03:11:46
says that the abuse the brothers describe could even help explain why the crime was so brutal. It makes sense that
03:11:54
in that moment it's almost like a breakdown. And that's not to make an excuse for anything that they've done,
03:11:58
but it's just to describe the state of mind of this is years and years of abuse where they couldn't act to protect
03:12:05
themselves. And once they pulled the trigger, it was like there was no turning back. But could Lyall and Eric
03:12:10
Menendez have truly been in fear for their lives that night? They're 18 and 21. Why couldn't they leave? Right.
03:12:17
Well, certainly there was a path that they could have taken is to try to get away from the family, but it sounds like
03:12:21
even at that age, they were very much under the control of their father still. I think that often times what people are
03:12:27
not aware of is that trauma completely rewires the brain. They probably did think at one point it was either them or
03:12:34
their parents, that it was a fight orflight conditioning that had come up. Attorney Cliff Gardner believes the case
03:12:41
would be tried differently today. The idea back then was a dads don't molest their children. And if by chance it
03:12:49
happened, these are 18 and 21 year old kids. They're strapping young men. They just leave. And both those I think are
03:12:56
undercut in in what we know today. Still, a better understanding of the effects of sexual abuse and some social
03:13:03
media support would do little on their own to make a difference in the brother's case legally. Instead, what
03:13:09
their defense needed was new evidence. And eventually, that's what it got. Did you or Eric think that another person
03:13:19
would accuse your father of child molestation? I did not. I could not believe it.
03:13:30
[Music] Over the years, Lyall and Eric Menendez appealed their convictions, but were
03:13:48
unsuccessful. It seemed unlikely that they would ever see beyond prison walls. But then new evidence began to
03:13:57
surface. The first piece in the form of a letter. Just kind of out of the blue, one of uh
03:14:04
my father's sister found a letter in storage. Appallet attorney Cliff Gardner says the
03:14:10
letter was written by Eric Mendez to his cousin Andy Cano in December 1988 about 8 months before the crime.
03:14:20
It's not dated, but you were able to get a frame of reference of the timing of it
03:14:25
based on the contents of the letter. Exactly. He talks about the Christmas party. We know the Christmas party that
03:14:31
they put on was in Christmas of 88. He talks about hiring a new tennis coach. There's a number of things in the letter
03:14:37
that allow us to authenticate when it was written. And it's a particular section of the letter that Gardner says
03:14:44
is key. He says, "I've been trying to avoid dad. It's still happening, Andy, but it's
03:14:50
worse for me now. Every night, I stay up thinking he might come in. I'm afraid he's crazy. He's warned me a hundred
03:14:58
times about telling anyone, especially Lyall. No one knew about it a child. It was never presented.
03:15:06
Remember, Andy Cano did testify at both trials. He said that Eric Mendez at age 13 confided in him that his dad had been
03:15:16
touching him. Prosecutors suggested that Cano was lying. He explained to me that these
03:15:23
massages that his father was giving him were beginning to hurt. The letter is significant. Why? Well,
03:15:30
the state's position was that Andy was a liar. Andy was making it up. This shows
03:15:36
that Andy wasn't making it up. It's contemporaneous evidence from Eric to his cousin Andy about what was
03:15:41
happening. But the letter was just the beginning. More evidence has surfaced that Gardner
03:15:47
says further supports Lyall and Eric Menendez's long-standing claims that they were sexually
03:15:54
abused. A man named Roy Relo has come forward claiming that he was sexually abused by Jose Mendez, too. Roy was a
03:16:04
member of the boy band Manudo which was big in the late 70s, mid 80s. They're a sensation in the Spanish-sp
03:16:15
speakaking world and throughout Latin America. Their appeal has caught on big. Menudo originated in Puerto Rico. The
03:16:24
band is best known for producing bigname talent like singer Ricky Martin. [Music]
03:16:34
The idea behind the band was to keep it perpetually young. Few of the performers
03:16:39
remained in the group beyond the age of 16, instead being rotated out for younger talent. It turns out Joseé
03:16:46
Mendez had ties to the group. Jose Mendez was working at RCA at the time and RCA signed Manudo to a recording
03:16:54
contract. Former Manudo member Roy Relo, now 54, was not available for an interview with 48 Hours. But in a sworn
03:17:03
affidavit filed just last year, he claims he went to Jose Menendez's home in the early 80s at the direction of the
03:17:11
band's then manager, Edgardo Diaz. Rella would have been between 14 and 15 years
03:17:17
old at the time. He says he drank a glass of wine, then felt like he had no control over his
03:17:24
body. He says Jose Menendez took him to a room and raped him. Relo first spoke publicly about the
03:17:34
allegations in a documentary. [Music] Rosello also alleges that he was sexually abused by Jose Menendez on two
03:17:52
other occasions. Right before and right after the performance at Radio City Music Hall in New York, I met Roy and he
03:18:01
talked to me about it. It was a difficult conversation for him. It was difficult for me to hear, but I thought
03:18:07
Roy was credible. It can take years for people to recognize what happened, to have the
03:18:15
courage to come forward. When I first heard about it, I I cried. For me, it was very meaningful to
03:18:24
just have things come out that caused people to really realize, okay, at least this part of what it's about is true.
03:18:33
Ly Menendez says he remembers Manudo band members coming over to the family home when they lived in New Jersey
03:18:40
before moving to Beverly Hills. He does not recall Relo specifically. What do you remember about
03:18:48
the Manudo band members going to your home? Only that my father had sort of intimate involvement with that
03:18:57
particular group. They usually would not have too much involvement with groups other than negotiations. But with Manudo
03:19:03
and Edardo Diaz, he traveled with them. He went to their concerts. He stayed in hotels that they stayed at.
03:19:11
Ly Menendez says he didn't think much of it until rumors began surfacing towards
03:19:16
the end of he and his brother's first trial. People in the industry were talking about that maybe something had
03:19:22
happened because there was a sex scandal in the group. Reload with other former Manudo members
03:19:28
have long accused Edgardo Diaz, the band's one-time manager, of sexual abuse. Diaz has always denied the
03:19:36
allegations, and no charges have been filed against him. The Los Angeles Police Department is currently
03:19:42
investigating a specific incident in which Rousel alleges Diaz raped him at this hotel in the 1980s.
03:19:51
But what does this new evidence mean in terms of Lyall and Eric Menendez's case?
03:19:57
The importance of the new evidence, you have to look back and understand what the state's position was at the second
03:20:01
trial. The state's position was that the sexual abuse never happened. And the state's position as to Jose Menendez was
03:20:09
he wasn't the type of person who would molest a young boy. This new evidence takes both those arguments and undercuts
03:20:15
them entirely. Gardner has filed a habius petition asking that his client's convictions be
03:20:23
vacated. The boys were abused as children, they were abused their whole life. And this is a manslaughter case,
03:20:28
not a murder case. It's just that simple. And if they were convicted of manslaughter, they would have received a
03:20:36
much shorter sentence and been out a long time ago. But will a judge buy gardener's
03:20:43
argument? It is very very possible that Jose Mendez was a child molester, but you don't get to murder
03:20:55
him and his wife in cold blood. What do you make of the new evidence? To see a timeline of how the
03:21:07
case unfolded, go to 48our.com. [Music] After attorney Cliff Gardner filed the habius petition in May 2023 asking that
03:21:25
Lyall and Eric Mendez convictions be vacated, it turned into a waiting game for a judge to rule. We asked former DA
03:21:34
Jackie Lacy what she makes of the new evidence. Starting with that letter, the one that appears to have been written by
03:21:39
Eric Mendez to his cousin Andy Cano months before the crime. The interesting thing about the letter is that there are
03:21:47
only two people who can authenticate it. Andy Kano and Eric Menendez. Andy Cano died in 2003 and Lacy points out that he
03:21:57
never mentioned the letter when he testified. You would think when Andy was on the
03:22:02
stand twice, he'd have brought that up and oh yeah, he told me about it recently and here is the letter. The
03:22:09
timing of that letter though, you are able to sort of pin down because you know it was the holidays because he
03:22:15
writes about his Christmas plans. But Natalie, look at it another way. You could include those details and get that
03:22:22
letter together after they were caught. This letter, for all we know, could have
03:22:27
been written by Eric Mendez shortly after the murder given to Kano, and Kano may have gotten cold feet about it and
03:22:36
not submitted it. But Gardner argues the new evidence is sound. He says the reason the letter was not brought up at
03:22:44
trial is likely because Eric Mendez and Andy Cano forgot about it. If you look at the letter, it's not just about what
03:22:52
Jose's been doing. It's about all sorts of other things. It was just one of many
03:22:56
letters that they wrote to each other. There really shouldn't be any doubt about the authenticity of the letter.
03:23:02
And as for Roy Relo, the former Manudo band member, can you discount his claims altogether? No. I think what the judge
03:23:10
has to weigh and consider is is this newly discovered evidence that would have changed the verdict. And Lacy says
03:23:18
she does not believe it would have. They're still stuck with the planning, the cover up, the money that they spent
03:23:27
afterwards. I think that you could argue the sexual abuse occurred. On the other
03:23:32
hand, at the moment, these men are driving down to San Diego, paying for the murder weapons, coming back and
03:23:43
waiting for an opportune time to go in and kill their parents. The molestation is not occurring right then. I do not
03:23:52
believe that at the time they murdered them that they were in danger at that particular minute of being murdered by
03:23:59
those people. I think they hated them. They might have had a good reason to hate them, but we can't condone
03:24:06
vigilanteism. When you calmly and logically look at the facts surrounding the killing, it's a murder. But Gardner
03:24:16
believes the new evidence would have made a difference to the jurors. He says evidence of abuse can mitigate a crime
03:24:23
and that's why prosecutors fought so hard to keep it out of the second trial. Sexual abuse, physical abuse is relevant
03:24:31
to your state of mind. Uh and state of mind is the key in determining whether something's murder or whether
03:24:37
something's manslaughter. What this evidence does is it puts you back in the situation that they were in
03:24:43
with the first trial. that there was corroboration for the abuse. And in the first trial, remember, two juries were
03:24:49
divided over whether the brothers should have been convicted of murder or manslaughter. The court declares a
03:24:55
mistrial. Gardner thinks this new evidence, combined with that of the first trial, rules out murder entirely.
03:25:04
My hope in the case is that the judge will realize that this new evidence is indeed credible and persuasive and he'll
03:25:10
vacate the convictions. If that happens, it would be up to the Los Angeles County
03:25:14
District Attorney's Office whether to retry the case. In a statement, the district attorney's office said it is
03:25:21
investigating the claims made in the habius petition. Alan Anderson wants to see his cousins released. What I would
03:25:29
say to the prosecutor judge would be, please look at all of the evidence. They are speaking the truth. They shouldn't
03:25:36
be in there as long as they've been. But still, Kitty Menendez's brother, Milton
03:25:42
Anderson, feels just the opposite. He says he doesn't believe the new evidence is credible. I don't think it's
03:25:48
evidence. And he wants his nephews to stay put. I think they should die of old age in
03:25:55
prison. I loved my sister and I protected her in life and I will love my sister and protect her in her death. Ly
03:26:05
Mendez says he understands his uncle's pain. Part of my remorse is for the pain that caused people like him. As they
03:26:12
await a judge's decision, Lyall and Eric Mendez, who reside in the same prison since 2018, are focused on
03:26:20
rehabilitation and continuing their education. I connect with other prisoners that have sex abuse histories
03:26:27
and work with them. Both brothers are married to women outside prison. I think it has made a huge difference to have
03:26:34
love and support like that. I try not to be defined by that one night. That's sort of a lifelong
03:26:46
journey. Not to be defined by that one night. [Music] Need more time with 48 Hours? Go deep
03:27:01
behind every true crime episode with firstirhand accounts from 48 Hours Investigations. Were you at all prepared
03:27:07
for what happened in this case? Shock is the word that comes to mind. Get inside
03:27:11
the twists and turns and get in on the case. Listen to Postmortem from 48 Hours, now available wherever you get
03:27:17
your [Music] podcasts. He was brilliant, phenomenally handsome. He was everything that to me
03:27:39
symbolized a future with a capital F. It just clicked. And from that first day, there was never any doubt that we
03:27:48
were meant to [Music] meet. I saw the outline of the gun. He was going to die that night no matter
03:28:05
what. This is a story about two people, John and Anne Bender, who from the outside
03:28:14
world seemed perfect. John Bender was a Wall Street genius and very quickly made
03:28:21
upwards of a half a billion dollars by the time he was in his early 30s. Their whole worlds were each other. And when
03:28:28
they found each other, they really didn't need anything else. We built the house with the idea of it
03:28:42
being our home to our taste. They said, "Let's retreat to Costa Rica to the deepest part of the
03:28:51
rainforest and set up a nature preserve. Not many people are willing or want to live in a house that has no
03:29:06
walls. Our architect said we were nuts. You were happy. I loved it. And John was
03:29:12
happy. Yes. As happy as John could be. What you think is paradise isn't necessarily paradise. John and Ant had
03:29:23
problems that money just couldn't fix. They were living a very inward life. They had cut off the world. He had
03:29:30
decided that the world would be better off without it. There were no lights on. All I knew
03:29:39
is he had a gun and I tried to get it away from him and I couldn't and it went off.
03:29:46
It comes down to basically two people in a room with a gun. I tried to stop him.
03:29:51
It sure looked like this guy was shot in the back of his head while he was sleeping.
03:29:58
I was framed. I was set up to be accused of the death of my husband. [Music] I refuse to give up. I'm I'm just not
03:30:11
going [Music] [Music] [Music] to 48 hours. Paradise lost. [Music] I had accepted the fact that I would
03:30:47
have to live the rest of my life with somewhat of a question mark over my head. Anne Bender has lived under a
03:30:54
cloud of suspicion since 2010 when her husband John was shot to death in the Costa Rican rainforest.
03:31:03
In 2015, she went to prison for murder, but now says total vindication is so close she can taste it. I've been
03:31:13
waiting a long time for this. [Music] It was in 2001 that the Benders moved to this remote corner of Central America to
03:31:26
live an extravagant idyllic dream. In a way, this trip is like going home. It is going home. Home was this. That's
03:31:39
the house. Oh my lord. Called Boraion. rising from the middle of the Costa Rican
03:31:47
rainforest. It was once Anne and John Bender's vision of paradise, the phrase overthe-top doesn't
03:31:56
begin to do this house justice. It's like some bizarre combination of Disneyland, an art museum, and something
03:32:04
you'd really only see in a James Bond movie. [Applause] [Music] Does this strike you as astonishing
03:32:19
every time you're here or are you just totally used to it? I'm used to it by now. It's home. You can see four floors.
03:32:26
There you just saw a bird. Nearly 50,000 square ft. This is your kitchen. Tons of
03:32:34
gleaming granite. Kitchen house has the dining room and the living room is on the other side. and no windows or walls
03:32:41
at all. I think that's one of the things I miss the most is the sounds of the birds. Where is the bathroom? Right
03:32:50
here. We built the house to our taste, which is crazy. John and Anne always had been a bit eccentric from the moment a
03:32:59
friend introduced them in Virginia in 1998. It was love at first sight for both of us. the daughter of an
03:33:07
international banker. She'd grown up all over the world and he was smitten. He proposed after just two weeks. They
03:33:16
married the next year. We both found in each other a future. They shared many interests and one unfortunate problem.
03:33:27
Both struggled with depression, specifically in Anne's case with bipolar mood disorder. I had just been diagnosed
03:33:36
with bipolarity. He could go from being extremely happy to extremely sad very quick. His friend
03:33:43
Pete Delissi says John hated doctors and dealt with his problems mostly in private. He was absolutely a genius.
03:33:52
John Bender had been a math and science wiz in high school, then studied physics
03:33:57
at the University of Pennsylvania. His looks got him work as a male model and his smarts helped him beat the odds at
03:34:05
the local casinos. He had an unusual talent for making money, a talent that blossomed at the Philadelphia Stock
03:34:14
Exchange. In just about 5 minutes, he developed a way of trading options that had never been done before. And within
03:34:21
just a few years, he was one of the top traders. By the time he was 25, I think he had amassed about 80 million. by the
03:34:26
time he was in his early 30s and he set up a hedge fund that was worth five to 600 million.
03:34:33
Ned Zean is a reporter and CBS news consultant. He says that by 1998, Bender was looking for both a safe haven for
03:34:42
his money and a purpose for his life. And that for all his brilliance and his bank balance, he never really fit in
03:34:50
with the Wall Street crowd. He just walks away from it. just walked away. But not without a plan. He and Anne,
03:35:01
both animal lovers, decided to use their fortune to start a refuge for wildlife.
03:35:07
In the dense rainforest of Costa Rica, they found the ideal location, 5,000 pristine acres. They named it
03:35:17
Borakayion after a native plant. I mean, this is as out there as you can get. Setting up a sanctuary for wildlife gave
03:35:25
the Benders a sanctuary, too. An escape to an extravagant private universe of exotic flowers, animals, and
03:35:34
waterfalls. Here, nothing was ordinary, not even the lights in the house. Many were customade of stained glass. How
03:35:44
many lamps are we talking about here? Approximately 400. You just said 400. Yeah. She says Jon thought the lamps
03:35:51
would brighten her outlook on the world. Depression was an immense bond between them. It's a very isolating disease and
03:36:01
people tend to pull away from society. Although construction of the house brought in running water, reliable
03:36:14
electricity, and dozens of jobs to the area, the project and the vendors got a chilly reception. There was definitely a
03:36:23
degree of who are these rich Ringo and who the hell do they think they are coming down and doing all of this?
03:36:31
Then came April 2001. It happened on this mountain road. Anne says armed men in an unmarked car forced
03:36:42
them onto the shoulder. The men claimed to be police but wore no uniforms. I thought it was a kidnapping. One pulled
03:36:50
John from his car and when he protested, this guy had fired the gun between John's legs and held up the gun to
03:36:57
John's head. I was terrified. That's when our entire lives changed. She says an attempted breakin at the
03:37:08
house months later only made things worse. The couple bought guns, hired guards, and turned the refuge into a
03:37:16
virtual fortress. They lived in fear. It makes me very sad to think back on how painful life could be for him. In 2005,
03:37:29
perhaps trying to write the ship, Bender set up a $70 million trust to manage the
03:37:35
refuge and provide for Anne's living expenses, he named this man, attorney Juan Alvarez, to run it. Alvarez was
03:37:44
then a trusted advisor. Later, Anne would point to him as a key figure in the events surrounding J's death.
03:37:54
But neither the trust nor the guards nor the guns stopped the couple's continuing
03:37:59
slide into depression. Anne says John saw a psychiatrist but refused anti-depressants. She however was taking
03:38:08
an enormous amount of medication and by the fall of 2009 says she had all but stopped eating. I was 40 lbs lighter
03:38:18
than I am now. By the next year, they had become prisoners in their own paradise. The natural beauty that
03:38:28
brought them here lost in irrational despair. Anne says John became convinced that every problem, her illness, even
03:38:37
the death of a pet bird was his fault. He became suicidally depressed. The stage was set. He wanted to die.
03:38:53
[Music] I'm sure this seems as real to you today as it did that night. So, what happened?
03:39:18
John brought a gun to bed. It was January 7th, 2010. I opened my eyes and I saw the outline of the trigger of the gun
03:39:34
and he had it pointed at his head at his at himself. Horrified, Anne Bender says
03:39:40
she recognized their 9 mm Ruger pistol. From what I could tell, he was holding it with both hands. And what did you do?
03:39:48
I got up on my knees and reared towards him and I tried to grab the gun. Were you able to get it? No, I was able to
03:39:58
get my hands around his and the gun slipped and it went off. Just minutes later, their security
03:40:10
guard, Oswaldo Aguilar, was first on the scene. She said to me, "I tried to stop him and
03:40:18
I couldn't do it." He told us, "Was there a long struggle?" No. Was it just instant, almost instantaneous? I
03:40:26
remember it as being instantaneous. It couldn't have been any more than two seconds.
03:40:34
When it went off, who was holding it? I don't think anyone was holding it. How does a gun go off when no one's holding
03:40:41
it? I think that it fell. He dropped it. I never touched the gun. And told roughly the same story to the
03:40:51
first responders who arrived here at Borakayan some 2 hours later. But reporter Ned Zean says that their
03:40:58
examination of the scene actually raised more questions than it answered. Why does somebody who's suicidal shoot
03:41:05
himself back here? They said, first of all, that John was left-handed. And how does a left-handed
03:41:12
person lying in bed shoot himself here? Prosecutor Edgar Ramirez has a simple answer. He doesn't.
03:41:22
If somebody wanted to commit suicide, he says the way they do it is here, here, or here. Okay. But if a left-handed
03:41:31
person did fatally shoot himself behind the right ear, the gun presumably would end up on the same side as the bullet
03:41:39
hole. Just to be clear, the gun is on the opposite side from the wound. Yes, the the wound is on this side of John's
03:41:45
head. He's laying on his back. The gun is over there on this side of his bed near his arm. So, you know, that doesn't
03:41:51
look good. There were no lights on. All I knew is he had a gun and I tried to get it away from him and I couldn't and
03:41:58
it went off. But investigators puzzled over the bullet's path entering just below the
03:42:06
right ear and ending up behind the left eye. Odd too was the location of a spent
03:42:13
cartridge found some 13 feet behind the bed. All they thought inconsistent with Ann's story of a struggle. Did you move
03:42:24
anything, touch anything, change anything in that room? The only thing I remember doing is using the
03:42:31
radio, unlocking the elevator, and touching John. But as far as the gun, the shell
03:42:43
casings, I don't remember. I don't remember anything. A pillow near John's head had a tear with gunpowder in it.
03:42:51
Which means the pillow was positioned over his head and the gun was fired, the prosecutor told
03:42:57
us. Within hours, investigators began to think John Bender may have been shot in
03:43:03
his sleep and died where he lay. There were pools of blood on both sides of his body. The earplugs he always wore still
03:43:12
in place. Starting from the fourth floor down, we started looking, says inspector Luis
03:43:20
Aguilar, who led a sweep of the house and quickly discovered something that stopped him cold.
03:43:29
We found a great amount of jewels, precious stones, gems, thousands of them, diamonds, rubies, opals, some on
03:43:38
display, others in suitcases, worth roughly $20 million. When you talk about the jewelry collection, you know, I have
03:43:47
jewelry. I don't think that's what you're talking about. No, no, no. In no way, shape, or form. Investigators
03:43:53
didn't see it as a jewelry collection either. To them, it looked a lot more like a smuggling operation. Do you think
03:44:00
that the fact that when the police got here, they find all these amazing jewels? Do you think that it it
03:44:07
prejudiced them? Um, you know, that so what? Strange doesn't mean that you're a criminal. Ann says the gems were merely
03:44:14
a hobby and an investment and says she did her best to cooperate that night. I was falling to pieces. Within hours of
03:44:26
John's death, after calling her family and Juan Alvarez, the trustee of Bora Kayan, I went into some sort of shock
03:44:35
mode. She was rushed to the hospital emaciated and covered with soores. My understanding is they were giving me a
03:44:44
40% chance of survival for the first two weeks. What was her condition then? Terrible. In what way?
03:44:52
Dehydrated, extremely thin. Her psychiatrist, Carlos Lasano, who Anne authorized to speak with us, met her in
03:45:00
intensive care just hours later. Was she in touch with reality? In and out. Do you think she was even
03:45:09
physically capable of doing what the prosecution alleged? No. Anne could not even hold a
03:45:18
fork when she was here. Anne Bender would remain hospitalized for 7 months under Dr. Lano's
03:45:28
care and under a growing cloud of suspicion. They were beginning to say, "This doesn't look like an accident.
03:45:35
This doesn't look like suicide. This looks like a lot like a murder." And they began looking at her as a suspect.
03:45:40
Did you for one second until it actually happened think that you were going to be
03:45:44
charged? [Music] No. She was skin and bones. I mean, she looked horrid. The Bender's friend, Paul Meyer, visited
03:46:07
Anne in the hospital just days after her arrival. She weighed 84 pounds. She literally looked like someone who had
03:46:14
just walked out of a concentration camp. Sick or not, she already was investigators number one murder suspect.
03:46:22
Police confiscated her clothes and her computer, but it's unclear if they examined Jon's messages or ever saw
03:46:30
these chilling excerpts dated just weeks before he died. I wish I were effing dead. It reads, "I feel so effing
03:46:39
horrible. I want to kill everyone and then myself." A window, Anne says, "On a tormented soul." John was the most
03:46:48
tortured person I've ever met. He had been wanting to kill himself for weeks. She thinks the lawyers Bender trustee
03:46:55
Juan Alvarez hired for her should have used Jon's messages in her defense. They wouldn't comment on strategy. They never
03:47:04
manifested that I was innocent. So their position was, "Oh yeah, she did do this." By not doing anything, they were
03:47:12
making it inevitable that I would be charged. 19 months after Bender died, Anne was
03:47:19
officially charged with murder. Convinced the gems had been smuggled into the country, authorities
03:47:26
later also charged her with possessing contraband. All she is sure just what Juan Alvarez wanted.
03:47:35
Why? To hide the fact she claims that he had siphoned money from the $70 million
03:47:41
Bender Trust. I'm the only person that can stop him or bring scrutiny into what he's done.
03:47:50
In July 2012, with murder charges hanging over her head, Anne Bender took Juan Alvarez to court for fraud. The
03:47:59
suit claimed Alvarez used the Bender Trust as his personal piggy bank, buying horses for his horse farm and paying his
03:48:08
credit card bills. Authorities raided his office and confiscated 135 boxes of documents. The
03:48:17
court then removed Alvarez as trustee investigation. This investigation will go nowhere because the accusations are
03:48:26
bogus, he told us. But whatever Juan Alvarez did or did not do, he did not shoot John Bender. And
03:48:36
prosecutors see Anne's lawsuit as an attempt to distract them from their firm belief that she did. They just didn't
03:48:44
see how that gunshot could have been in that part of his head by suicide. Was this suicide or an accident or
03:48:55
murder? The forensic evidence is so vital in this case. It's incredible. We brought in outside experts to Bora Kion
03:49:04
and asked them to take a look at it. This was the bedroom. This is where John Bender died. In the rarified world of
03:49:11
forensic science, you can see there's a lot of blood on the crime scene. Selma and Richard Eelenboom are
03:49:16
internationally recognized but sometimes controversial experts known for stirring
03:49:22
debate in high-profile cases once thought open and shut like this and this one from the start. They say some Costa
03:49:30
Rican authorities had a preconceived idea that this was murder. The pathology report is very straight from the
03:49:38
beginning. This is a homicide and let's prove it's a homicide. He does look like
03:49:43
he's sleeping. A lot of people who die with their eyes closed look like they're sleeping and they might have been wide
03:49:49
awake when it happened. The prosecutor said, "If you're going to shoot yourself, everyone knows it's here or
03:49:55
it's here or it's here." Well, that's completely unscientific. If that's an example of the logic they used in this
03:50:02
case, then I'm really very worried. They cite other monumental mistakes. Not immediately testing for gunpowder
03:50:10
residue, not fingerprinting the gun, not testing the sheets for blood spatter. What is the most vital thing that they
03:50:18
missed? I think the trajectory. Then you can place the shooter on the scene in relation to the victim. It's like this.
03:50:27
They told us the trajectory, the path the bullet followed was critical to understanding where the gun was when it
03:50:35
was fired and if an or John fired it. Looking at this investigation, how would you grade it? Um, very poor.
03:50:46
In January 2013, a three judge panel acquitted Anne Bender of murder. She was safe, but not for
03:51:03
[Music] long. After her aqu quiddle, Anne Bender hoped for a new start. Hey. Uh-uh. but
03:51:18
never thought of leaving Costa Rica, moving instead to a small apartment. When the trust stopped paying her bills,
03:51:26
friends and family helped. She began dating a new boyfriend, another American, Greg Fischer. She has never
03:51:33
not done what this court system has asked her to do. Never not done what this government has asked her to do. So,
03:51:38
she says she was shocked in May 2014 when the Costa Rican government put her on trial for murder. a second
03:51:50
time. It may seem odd to Americans, but in Costa Rica, there is no double jeopardy rule. So, if a prosecutor
03:51:57
doesn't like a verdict, he can appeal. And if he wins, try the defendant all over again with the same charges, the
03:52:05
same evidence, and the same witnesses. This time there are new judges, but prosecutors repeat their case, arguing
03:52:18
that the evidence from the body, the bullet casing, the entry wound, blood stains, and pillow case prove this was
03:52:27
murder. Defense attorney Fabio Okonot trio is just as insistent it was suicide. In all
03:52:35
homicide, there's a reason. In this case, there's no reason. And in a risky move, he decides there is
03:52:43
nobody better able to make that point than Anne Bender herself. I want to make a statement and make a statement. She
03:52:52
certainly does. I was so happy here when we moved here. She stays on the stand the entire day. He was talking about
03:53:00
suicide every day for at least 4 weeks. It was an issue of getting through every
03:53:11
day. You're you seem to be saying that there was no way to prevent him from attempting suicide.
03:53:18
I tried my hardest. I'm not saying just no way for you. There was no avenue open. No. Period. This was this was
03:53:26
destined to be. He wanted to die. [Music] In his testimony, security guard and first responder Oswaldo Aguilar
03:53:37
describes the scene, but he also raises questions about one of the prosecutor's key assumptions. The main point of
03:53:45
evidence for the prosecution was John was left-handed. The bullet wound is behind the right side of his head.
03:53:51
You're lying in bed. How does a suicidal man possibly end up shooting himself like this? Agular has an answer,
03:54:00
pointing out that though a lefty, John Bender carried his gun on the right side.
03:54:09
But testifying for the prosecution, forensic pathologist Gretchen Flores doesn't care if John Bender was right or
03:54:17
left-handed. She insists suicide is inconceivable. Another person, she says, would have to fire the weapon. Her
03:54:26
conclusion from the blood evidence and the position of the body, John Bender, never saw the shot coming. It's 6 cm
03:54:34
from the midline. At Bora Kayion, our independent forensics experts, Richard and Selma Illanbomb, tested that idea
03:54:42
that John's body never moved. It would explain the blood we find over here, but it doesn't explain the blood over there.
03:54:49
In their view, it had to have moved for the blood to have pulled as it did on both sides of his body. So, his head was
03:54:57
completely different. This was the position of his head when he was shot. The blood pattern analysis support the
03:55:03
hypothesis that there was some sort of fight. They showed us how a struggle could have happened, how An's efforts to
03:55:10
get the gun could make it fire. Well, the vehicle goes like this and he start bleeding, oozing. how John's body then
03:55:18
might have moved and he slowly falls back in this position which accounts for the blood on this side on this side. I
03:55:24
lunged forward towards him with my hands. I fell towards the center of the bed and the gun went off.
03:55:38
The hypothesis that he was shot in the position he was found is not supported by this evidence. Also unlikely, the
03:55:46
Ikeland booms say, is the prosecutor's theory that Anne shot her husband from behind the bed. This trajectory is not
03:55:53
very likely. It doesn't make any sense. No, I mean, just look at me. If if I would shoot him through the head, I
03:55:58
would go like this. And they showed us why they think the odd location of the spent cartridge. Such damning proof,
03:56:05
according to the prosecution, really proves nothing at all. The casing can end up in that
03:56:13
position if the gun is twisted far enough around. Correct. There is no chance she murdered her husband. Ann's
03:56:21
family and friends want to make sure the judges think so too. If I thought Anne had anything to do with this in any way,
03:56:28
shape, or form, I wouldn't be here. But for Ned Zean, the case is no longer clear. So you can see a scenario where
03:56:35
it's an accident. Yes. Where it's suicide and where it might be murder. You can see all these. Yes, I absolutely
03:56:43
can. And I think anybody who sat in that courtroom would probably say the same thing except for maybe Ann and her
03:56:48
attorney. Um because it's any of those make sense. In his closing, prosecutor Ramirez
03:56:58
insists there is only one plausible scenario. Anne Bender shot her husband. Defense attorney Okono Trio pleads for
03:57:09
reason, saying an is not an assassin. Facing a possible 25 years in prison, Anne herself has the last word. I did
03:57:21
not kill John. But even after four years and two trials, she is unprepared for this
03:57:34
verdict. Translation: Guilty of murder. [Music] Her friends and family sit stunned. She is sentenced immediately to
03:57:57
22 years in prison and she is led away. I really don't remember much after that except the police officers surrounding
03:58:08
me. Her boyfriend, Greg Fiser, is devastated. I don't think she's going to live. I don't think she's going to
03:58:14
survive. The reality that I could be here for 22 years. Have I accepted that? I don't
03:58:21
think there's any way that I can. and Maxim. Immediately after being sentenced to 22
03:58:37
years for murder, Anne Bender appealed her conviction. There's no evidence that proves beyond a
03:58:45
reasonable doubt that I killed John. The evidence doesn't exist. We met with her
03:58:50
6 weeks later in prison. I'm still surviving and I refuse to give up. I'm I'm just not going to. And giving up in
03:58:58
this place would be tempting. There are about 50 women per room, three toilets, no hot water, no
03:59:08
privacy, none. Zero. Nada. And no guarantee she won't spend the rest of her life behind
03:59:16
bars. How did you fight back from something like that when in those surroundings? You survive. You do what
03:59:24
you got to do. Then in the winter of 2015, after nine months in prison, a development almost as stunning as Anne's
03:59:33
conviction. She wins her appeal. The court annulls the verdict. She will have to face yet another trial, but she is
03:59:41
released for now. She learns all this from a friendly guard. I said, "You're kidding. I can leave." And she said,
03:59:48
"Yeah, you're free." I fell to the ground completely. I just lost it. But in this story, bad news always seems to
03:59:57
follow the good. And Anne soon learns she is not off the hook. Prosecutors have decided to try her for a third
04:00:09
time. Her third trial begins about 6 months later. And not only is an physically more fragile than ever, she
04:00:18
has suffered a major personal setback. Her boyfriend, Greg Fiser, died of an asthma attack while she was in
04:00:27
prison. But at this trial, there is no shortage of people to lean on. Ann's parents, her best friend, Seline. She's
04:00:35
the best human being that I've ever met. A lot of people that are close to me are
04:00:41
very invested in my my getting out of this. John Bender's old friend, Pete Delissi, has called in legal
04:00:48
reinforcements, too. two lawyers from the UK and two from the US paid by an they'll advise her local attorney and
04:00:58
closely monitor the trial, making sure the judges know they're watching. Anne's biggest challenge may
04:01:07
be just holding herself together in court. In contrast to her dayong testimony in
04:01:16
previous trials, she is on the stand for only two hours. And this time she tries to appeal to the
04:01:29
judges by testifying in Spanish. Once again, telling her story is an emotional ordeal.
04:01:40
[Music] [Music] Prosecutor Edgar Ramirez's approach to this trial is much the same, but he appears to be minus several
04:01:59
key witnesses, including his star, medical examiner Gretchen Flores. She has mysteriously gone missing.
04:02:12
and supporters call it an obvious delaying tactic. It's part of their strategy. They dragged us out as long as
04:02:18
they can so everyone leaves. But this time, team Bender has some star witnesses of its own. So he's lying like
04:02:30
this and put the gun like this. That's what they said. We've come here to uh participate in the truth finding. Selma
04:02:37
and Richard Ikeland bomb highowered and controversial. They investigated the clothing and there was no blood there.
04:02:44
Ann's lawyers hired the Dutch forensic experts after the Illan Bombs completed their independent analysis for 48 hours.
04:02:53
But for the Illan Bombs to testify, the Costa Rican judges must agree to make an exception and
04:03:01
allow new witnesses. Yolanda, we don't know if we can testify or or not. The prosecution
04:03:11
strenuously object. The judges decide that Selma can testify. Here you see the bullet.
04:03:24
Richard cannot. You would say, "Okay, with this gun," but the defense still can use him. He will be allowed to
04:03:30
cross-examine the state's medical examiner. Gretchen Flores finally has resurfaced after two weeks. Richard
04:03:38
Illanbomb's chance to question this witness is an opportunity, but also a big challenge. Flores is as certain as
04:03:46
ever that Anne Bender killed [Music] John. We are not lawyers, so it's it's a new role. Here you have a photo. Costa
04:03:58
Rican law prohibits Americanstyle cross-examination in which lawyers use questions suggesting the answers they
04:04:06
want. So Ann's legal team quickly has to train this Dutch scientist to think like
04:04:13
a Costa Rican attorney. We have absolutely a lot of work to do to help and he'll have to pointedly ask medical
04:04:21
examiner Flores about her experiments without seeming to have an opinion either way. But it seems to me what we
04:04:28
can do is explore what experiments the crown have sorry the prosecution have not done when did you do this you didn't
04:04:36
do this you didn't do this that's fine that is providing information and we're not it's providing information yes
04:04:45
indirect after working all weekend the team is ready now we have to play lawyer games do you
04:04:57
know um if this gun was tested for uh the distance of a missile flame. No, I don't know. Am I allowed to show a
04:05:08
picture? Yes. Go ahead. Richard Ianbomb has to tread carefully and the constraints limit what he can
04:05:18
accomplish. But next, it's Selma's turn. She is a witness. I remember her walking
04:05:25
in and the reaction of the judges, you know, just seeing her cuz she has such an amazing presence in the courtroom.
04:05:31
And as a witness, she can go much further. I see no support for the scenario of a homicide. Her testimony
04:05:40
was amazing. In my opinion, as an expert, all the evidence that is available points clearly in the
04:05:48
direction of a suicide. The prosecutor makes a lastditch effort to strike Selma's testimony from the
04:06:00
record. But for now, the judges decide it can stay. You can't unring the bell. They heard what she said.
04:06:09
It's been three long weeks. At last, they are ready to vote on a verdict. After three trials and nearly
04:06:21
10 years, the judges are looking at me and I hear the words not guilty. Absuela. And that
04:06:33
translates absolved. Absolved. Yeah. [Music] The world believes me. Finally. This time, Anne takes no
04:06:54
chances. As soon as Costa Rican authorities return her passport, she flies home to the US with no intention
04:07:02
of ever going back to Costa Rica, regardless of what zealous prosecutors do. We caught up with her in Washington.
04:07:11
I don't see you flying down to Costa Rica for a fourth trial. I don't see it either.
04:07:18
Not a chance. No. Not so fast. In a jaw-dropping decision months later, a Costa Rican court announces yes, it
04:07:27
intends to try and bend her a fourth time. Her stunned lawyers immediately appeal. But win or lose, it's doubtful
04:07:37
prosecutors actually could try her again. Trials in abstentia are not allowed in Costa Rica. While there is an
04:07:46
extradition treaty in place, legal experts say that after three trials, they would be shocked to see the US
04:07:53
extradite Anne Bender for a [Music] fourth. In fact, Anne seems finally to have put this one-time paradise behind
04:08:05
her. Her past there as haunted as the abandoned, overgrown jungle compound she left behind.
04:08:14
I'll never get back everything that was taken from me. Obviously, I'll never get
04:08:19
back my husband. Now, it's time to go after what can be recovered and find a wife
04:08:37
again. Heat. Heat. [Music]