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Tonight on Dateline. He says, I'm so sorry, but your dad has passed. The coroner is telling me.
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This is a suicide. This is a suicide. There's no freaking way. My husband just shot his show.
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I ran down the hallway. I thought I was going to lose my mind. She was like, don't go back in the bedroom.
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This was your dad's wife? Yeah. You see the handgun right there in his hand. I mean, it's obvious.
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You didn't think his body needed another look. Any more testing, any more anything?
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No, based on the information that I had at that time. Was that a mistake? Zero investigation, zero autopsy, open and shut.
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We have pictures of what exactly happened in that bedroom. It was painfully obvious the body had been moved.
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You didn't have to be an expert to see that this crime scene was staged. You have to admit that it does look suspicious.
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I don't know what it looks like to other people. I know he loved me, and I loved him.
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Fire shot through my entire body. My dad did not take his own life. How does your family handle this?
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We get to work. It was ruled a suicide, but who really pulled the trigger? A family fights to uncover the truth.
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I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Blaine Alexander with Malice. Time.
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Once it's gone, it's the one thing you can never get back. Time with loved ones.
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Time spent waiting for answers. The clock on this story, for this family, began on a Saturday morning.
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I want to talk about June 28th, 2014. Okay. Yes, sir! Is this emergency? Yes. Albany, Georgia.
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A woman on the line with 911. She was frantic. Okay, call me. Ma'am. I can't believe he's done that.
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Okay, I don't know what you're saying. Her name was Susan Embert. She was calling about her husband, Jake.
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My husband just shot his cell off the gun dog. And I ran into the room and he shot his cell.
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I thought maybe he was cleaning his guns or something. Because he's always messing with them, you know?
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So I didn't know what happened. When you heard the noise, did you immediately know it was a gunshot?
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I knew it was a gunshot, but I didn't know if it came from back there or where. I just heard it was loud.
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He was cleaning from his head. I didn't look. Is he conscious, ma'am? No. I don't think so.
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I don't know. All right, ma'am. Don't touch him or anything, okay? I'm sorry. She was still on the phone when a truck pulled up to the house.
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It was Will Embert, Jake's 17-year-old son from a previous marriage. He had been there earlier that morning and was coming back to spend the day with his dad.
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I turned my truck off and I can hear yelling. Susan comes out, like just comes barreling out the house real fast.
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She's on the phone. She's yelling. Could you hear what she's saying? It was discombobulated.
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And I'm like, what's going on? And she was like, don't go back in the bedroom. You were trying to keep him away from the house.
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To protect him. You know, from not seeing the sight. I was like, why? She went and told me why.
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And eventually she told me that my dad shot himself. Oh, God. Mm-hmm. What did you do?
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I fell on the ground. I think I blacked out. I was very upset. I was crying. I remember I looked up.
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Well, I remember Susan saying that the police are here. I remember I opened my eyes and the Daugherty County police car pulling up the driveway.
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Will got on the phone with his older sister, Rachel. She was 30 at the time. He said,
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calm as can be. I'll never, ever, ever forget it. I don't know how to tell you this.
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Instantly, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, my little brother's about to tell me that he got his
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girlfriend pregnant. Because you could hear in his voice, something was off. Something was just off.
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And he just paused. He didn't say anything. And I'm like, just spit it out, Will. And he said,
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Dad's dead. And I have to get there. I have to get to him. I have to get to my dad's house, jump in the vehicle.
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Don't stop at any red lights. Don't stop at any stop signs. At the house, Doherty County police officers were already inside.
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There's blood on the floor right there. As they surveyed the scene in the bedroom,
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their conversation was broadcast over the countywide police channel. There goes the bullet right there, too.
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Yeah, right there in the wall. There's a gun. I haven't touched anything yet. There's all his matter and stuff on that.
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Do we need to retain this, the weapon? I don't see what. The coroner arrived next and had a look at Jake's body.
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He was still there when Rachel pulled up to the house. I get to my dad's house. They have a very long dirt driveway.
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So I park at the end of the driveway, and I immediately jump out of the vehicle.
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I stomping up the driveway My fists are balled by my side and I literally just stomping up the driveway I see officers up at the house I see Susan standing out there up at the house And instantly I like what the f happened What the f happened
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It would not be the last time Jake's family asked that question. Nobody ever asked you, hey, what did you see? What happened?
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You didn't think his body needed another look. Didn't need any more testing, any more anything.
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Nothing went upstairs on in your head. Nothing did. Nothing. There's blood splatter on the floor.
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Never cleaned up. You basically have a detective's mind at this point. No. I just watch Dateline.
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Jake and Brooke's sister, Yvonne, lived 600 miles away in North Carolina. Jake's daughter, Rachel, called her.
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She said, Aunt Yvonne. Oh. My dad shot himself. And immediately I thought he was cleaning his gun and it must have went off.
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So I started screaming at her and asking her, where is he? I just kept screaming, where is he?
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And she said, he's not here anymore. I felt like I left my body. I said, this can't be.
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It can't be. It was a cruel mixture of pain and sheer disbelief that Jake was suddenly gone.
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He had always been dedicated to his family. Did he have a philosophy or a special way that he lived his life?
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Yeah, you know, he just always put himself full force in anything. If he committed to something, he was going to just see it through.
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And that was just with everything. He was also a jokester who loved to make others laugh.
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So he would throw a joke in any situation. Any situation. No matter what. Yes. Even if it wasn't really appropriate.
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Yes. Yes. That part. But what really made Jake light up, his family says, being a dad.
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Jake wasn't Rachel's biological father. He married her mother when Rachel was just a baby.
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He was never a stepfather or an adoptive father. He was your daddy. He was my dad, like through and through and through my dad.
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Yeah. I love how you describe him because you talk about he was funny, but at the same time, he had this military discipline about him.
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Oh, absolutely. Yeah, definitely authoritative. You wanted to always remain on my dad's good side.
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Jake was an Army veteran and mechanic at a nearby Marine base. He was a guy's guy who, Rachel says, did his best to relate to his makeup-loving daughter.
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And then his son Will was born. I don't even know if my mom got a hold of him that day.
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I'm pretty sure my dad was like, my son. I mean, he was just so over the moon. Immediate bond.
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Yeah. You guys were instantly best friends. Right. You know, like most kids would try and get away from their parents as often as they could,
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but I always wanted to hang out with my dad. Jake loved taking his son to the racetrack.
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Cars had always been his thing since he was a little boy. His sister remembers a time Jake took the family Ford out for a spin when he was six years old.
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He had gotten in the car, in the driveway, and I guess he knocked it out of gear.
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So this man knocked on the door and told my mom, I believe that's your car across the street.
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It had rolled out of the driveway? Yes. Oh, gosh. But Jake acted like it was great.
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He was, you know, at the steering wheel doing his little thing and had no idea that he had done something wrong.
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Jake was the youngest of six and the only boy. You all must have doted on him like crazy.
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We used to tease and say that he had six mothers, five sisters and his real mother.
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Jake went from a childhood surrounded by women to a marriage of 26 years. When that marriage ended in divorce, Jake found himself without a woman in his life for the first time.
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He joined an online dating service and soon met Susan. She was 48, Jake 51. What was it about Jake that caught your eye?
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He was well around my age and he was clean cut. I mean, you know, we just clicked.
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We clicked. We just had a good time. We didn't have to do anything. We could just ride somewhere and we had fun.
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She was a nurse. You know, she was a good person. He was interested in her. So he was really going on about her.
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Yes. Just a few months into the relationship, Jake's health took a sudden turn. He had a heart attack.
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Susan moved in with Jake as he was recovering, and she says very soon after, he suggested they get married.
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I said, are you serious? And he's like, yes. And I was like, no, I'm not ready to get married.
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Were you surprised when he asked you to marry him? Yes, but I know he loved me, and I loved him.
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Three months later, he asked me to marry him again. This time, the answer was yes.
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They married in a short courthouse ceremony in front of just a few family members.
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To Rachel, it all seemed too fast, but in a way, she could understand it. Sometimes when things happen, you know, like him having a heart attack, her being a nurse.
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Yeah, you probably would want that woman's touch, you know, around. That's what I would want, you know, I would want to be.
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cared for. Yeah, absolutely. After recovering from the heart attack, Jake had a new health problem.
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He started having seizures. They checked him out and they couldn't find nothing wrong. He was having seizures.
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I didn understand 16 months after his first heart attack Jake had another one and it was massive Jake survived but he started to have even more symptoms stomach pain and nausea
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At this point, Will, were you getting worried? Yeah. He started just getting sick and sicker and
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sicker and just wasn't getting better. He ended up, because he was so sick, having to remain out
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of work, which that was the first in his entire working life that he's ever missed so much work.
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His health problems led to financial problems. And then another blow. His dog Zoe got sick and
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had to be put down. My dad was crying. He was upset. He said that Susan took Zoe to the vet.
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The vet said that she had distemper and that she needed to be euthanized. It was all too much.
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Losing his health, his dog, and Jake's family could tell it was taking a toll. Soon, the normally upbeat persona was largely gone.
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Did you get the sense that he was trying to put on a brave face for you? I feel like he was trying to put it on for everybody.
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He's a tough guy. He was fighting. And I think he knew that I would try to help him.
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I just didn't get the chance. Let me get some gloves and I'll get that gun removed for you.
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Now, June 28, 2014, after struggling with his health for a year and a half, Jake was gone.
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The victim, it seemed, of his own depression. You can see the handgun right there in his hand right there.
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I mean, I'm not no CSI kind of person or nothing like that, but I mean, it's obvious, you know.
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An obvious suicide to first responders. At the scene, Susan was telling police about Jake's health struggles and how sad he had been.
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I said, I know you are, baby. I said, give him some help. After assessing the scene, the coroner made it official.
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He documented Jake's gunshot as self-inflicted. Open and shut, it seemed, but not to everyone.
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What are you thinking at this point? Things are not adding up. Nothing is adding up.
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Susan Ember remembers the days following her husband's death as some of the hardest of her life.
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I thought he was going to be the one that, you know, you grow old together. Rock and rock and chairs in front porch kind of thing.
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After that time, I wasn't in my right mind for two months. I didn't think I was coming back.
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And my mom had to take care of me. This is Susan's daughter, Krista. Were you talking to your mom throughout this time?
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What was her state of mind then? She was just crying. She was hysterical. She was devastated that her husband was gone.
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I knew that Jake was sad and stuff like that. But like, you never think somebody's actually going to do something like that.
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Will certainly didn't think his dad was depressed enough to take his own life, and not on that day of all days.
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He'd seen his dad just that morning. They'd had coffee together and made plans to go to the racetrack.
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In fact, Jake's old car was set to be raced that very afternoon, a 1975 Firebird.
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It wasn't even a question. It was like, we're going to go see it. We're going. Because he loved that car.
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He did. I said, okay, I'm going to go pick up my girlfriend and come back, and then we can go.
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When you left, what was his demeanor like? Was he excited? Yeah. Yeah, I just expected him to go shower and get dressed, and by then I'd be back.
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That timing seemed especially puzzling to Rachel. She just couldn't wrap her mind around her dad ending his life then,
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when Will was on his way back to the house and would likely see the aftermath. The relationship that my dad and my brother had together was so...
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Oh my gosh. When I say best dad award, I mean that in all capital letters. He was...
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He never, ever, ever, knowing that Will was coming right back. Never. would have done that to my brother.
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Confused and looking for answers, Rachel and Will went back to the house that night after the shooting.
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They went into the bedroom where their dad died. I went back there, saw it. The sheets were stripped off.
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The mattress was still there. There were two towels laid on top of the blood, but the blood was still soaking through the towels.
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And then so my brother and I were just standing in the room and we just started crying.
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Rachel tried to imagine what her dad had been thinking. It wasn't easy. My dad was sick. He was experiencing health issues.
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You know, I try to put myself in everybody's shoes. Okay, you're sick. All of this stuff is transpiring.
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And everything, I just kept being right to the back. There's no freaking way. She wanted more information from Susan, but Susan and her dad hadn't been married that long, just over a year.
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Rachel didn't know her very well. And it was an emotional time for everyone. When Rachel and Will returned to the house the next day,
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the locks were being changed. Changing the locks on our home. Why? That part. Why?
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Why? That is you know I mean the trauma makes you do weird things but that was very bizarre Also strange what Rachel says happened when family members tried to talk to Susan about planning a memorial service
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Well, we're not having a memorial service. That's what Susan says. Yeah. Well, why are we not having a funeral service?
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Well, because he doesn't have any family or friends. It was just us. It was just us.
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He's got a sister. Yes. Got tons of family, tons of friends, tons of coworkers. People who would want to remember him.
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Absolutely. Susan says Jake's family has it all wrong. She was planning a service, but they went ahead and organized one without her.
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They took it upon themselves, I guess, to have it before me. I was trying to get it together, but it was like they wanted it done right then.
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And did you go to that one? I did not. I wasn't. No, I did not. I wasn't invited over there.
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They didn't want me there. Did you feel that there was some contention between you and Rachel?
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I felt like something was going on, yes. I didn't know. I was not even in my right mind at that time, actually. I mean, I was really devastated.
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As the Emberts said goodbye to Jake, they were still in disbelief, maybe even denial about how he died.
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I remember my dad having a conversation with me about that and how strongly my dad was against suicide.
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thinks that it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. So you were very clear on where your dad stood when it came to suicide.
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Yeah. I ask this devil's advocate. There are unfortunately plenty of people who have mental health issues who mask it very well,
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who can appear happy but still go off and take their own life. Did you think that was a possibility?
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No, I didn't think so at all. Things are not adding up. Nothing is adding up. We were trying to figure out what really took place on June 28th.
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Jake's family made a decision. They needed someone to look at this. This is Yvonne Magnus, in reference to the death of my brother.
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Yes, ma'am. Like Jake's kids, his sister Yvonne just couldn't accept the official narrative of her brother's death.
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Did you believe that your brother had hurt himself? Oh, no. Instantly, I was like, no.
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Not even for a second? Not even for a second. She drove down from North Carolina and went to see the police.
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You're thinking, someone has to look into this. You're trying to rally someone to look into this case.
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Right. In fact, Jake's family pleaded their case to officers several times. And so two detectives went to the house.
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They spoke briefly with Susan until she declined to talk further. But nothing changed.
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This is Yvonne Magnus, in reference to the death of my brother. Yes, ma'am. Yvonne recorded one of her follow-up phone calls with the detective.
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The evidence at the scene and the evidence that we have come across since then, there is nothing that would leave our agency to believe that it was homicide.
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So if it went wrong, then I guess it'll come back on me. It is what it is. I can't change what happened.
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From the investigation, that's what we've determined. It's closed. Nothing. They can't do anything.
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You know, just in my short time of knowing you, Yvonne, I'm very sure that you are not one to be messed with.
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It's very clear that, you know, you don't take no for an answer. I don't take no for an answer when I believe that somebody either isn't telling the truth or something is very wrong.
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And you believe both of those things? Yes. A friend suggested Yvonne try a different approach, a private eye.
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Had you ever thought of that before? Did you know much about private investigators?
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No. I know for a lot of people that sounds like something you hear in a movie or a TV show.
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Yeah. I had no idea what to do, where to find one, where to go. So she did what most of us would do.
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I was sitting in front of my computer, and I actually typed, Private Investigators, Albany, Georgia.
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Just Googled? Just Googled. And I was crying so hard, I couldn't even see my screen.
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So I pointed to it and touched the screen. And when I did, I said Lee Wilson. I got the call.
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Lee Wilson, a former police detective with more than 20 years of experience. He's handled all kinds of cases, including suicides.
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It had been a month since Jake died. Lee met with his family. He listened, and he agreed the case did deserve a second look.
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You know, your son's going to be coming back in an hour with his girlfriend, and y'all are going to go to a planned event that day,
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and you just walk in the bedroom and take your own life. That just didn't sound right.
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It didn't, but, you know, it piqued my interest. But he says in his experience, law enforcement usually makes the correct call.
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So he took the case with no promises. You were pretty frank with them. You said, you know what, if my findings determine that he did die by suicide, you'll have to accept this.
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Yes, I tell them that, you know, I will call it like I see it. That's all we wanted.
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Investigate it. Investigate it. So Lee got started. First up, collect as many records as he could.
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I wanted to see the photographs. I wanted to see any crime, any lab reports, toxicology reports, police reports.
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I wanted to see what led law enforcement and ultimately the coroner to put on the death certificate that Jake died from the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
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But all those things that you mentioned, toxicology, measurements, all sorts of forensics, any of that stuff was in it.
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Is that done? No. The case file he got from police was thin. As far as he could tell, no detective had even shown up at the scene.
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The entire investigation took less than an hour. From the time the call came in until the last call to the radio operator saying they were clearing the scene.
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And processing a scene like that should typically take? Hours. Just zero. Open and shut.
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Called in as a suicide. ruled out a suicide with zero investigation. Boom. Lee spoke to one of the first officers on the scene to find out what happened.
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Turns out he was brand new to the force. That scene had been his first time responding to a death call.
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He explained to me that, you know, when he got the call, he thought in his mind that he was prepared for that scene.
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He admitted that he had watched videos in the police academy. He'd never seen a dead body.
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He had not seen a dead body, from my understanding, before that day. So he walks into that, having never seen a dead body, fresh out of police academy.
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And his comment to me was, Mr. Lee, I just wanted to get out of there. As for the more experienced officers.
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I'm not no CSI kind of person or nothing like that, but. Lee learned they didn't do much more.
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I mean, it's obvious, you know. Here's Lee talking to one of them. When you went into the bedroom, did you do any kind of investigative work or make any observations to determine whether it was suicide or not?
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I looked at the body and, of course, I saw the deceased with the gun in his hand laying back on his bed.
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And I just thought pretty much soon. It was quickly ruled a suicide based on their observations at the scene and the statement of Susan Ember.
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No one ever mentioned or discussed or considered, to your knowledge, that this could be something other than suicide, did they?
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No, sir. The coroner never ordered an autopsy, and Susan had the body cremated within 24 hours.
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There was so much that could have been and should have been done before determining cause of manner of death.
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He could have taken it back to the morgue. He could have cleaned the wounds there, taken measurements, checked for gunpowder residue on the hands of Mr. Embert.
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The coroner's role is especially frustrating to Jake's family because Rachel had pleaded with him at the scene.
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I said over and over, are you sure my dad did this? Are you sure my dad did this? Are you sure my dad did this?
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He could have taken that and said something to somebody. Are you sure? Yes. And said, hey, the daughter's out there questioning, you know, if we're sure.
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Nothing went upstairs on in your head. Nothing did. Nothing. Reinvestigating the case with so little evidence would be an uphill battle.
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But Lee says the responding officers did manage to do one thing right. and it would make all the difference.
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You knew that there was something wrong with those photos. Yeah, I knew that this had been manipulated by somebody.
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In homicides and suicides, there's a typical method of processing a scene. Collect evidence, test forensics, interview witnesses.
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In the case of Jake Embert, almost none of that happened. We asked the Doherty County Police Department about that, but they declined to answer our questions.
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My job is to determine the cause of the man and death of the individual. But Michael Fowler, the Doherty County coroner, did agree to an interview.
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June 28, 2014. How long had you been the coroner? About a year and a half. What's your first step once you get there?
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First I had to speak with the MS. Then I needed to go see the individual. I saw the gun laying beside him. Once I see him, then I pronounced the time of death. Then I go back out and see what's going on. So to get with the law enforcement. Then I listened for Ms. Embert talk for a while. Then I went back into the house trying to see was the story kind of lining up what she was saying.
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Jake Embert's daughter, Rachel, kept saying over and over again, are you sure? Are you sure?
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We're talking less than an hour at that point. How could you definitively say at that point that this is a suicide?
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There'd been no autopsy. The body hadn't been transported. Based on the investigation, to speak with the law enforcement,
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what they'll find is if in the process of interviewing whoever was there, I'll take that finding and come up with that determination.
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On law enforcement and on what Susan Embert? told police. That's what I was basing it on. Jake Embert was cremated the next day. Yes. You didn't
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think his body needed another look, didn't need any more testing, any more anything. No, I was
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pretty well comfortable at that time based on the information that I had at that time. Was that a
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mistake? No, I don't think it's a mistake. Based on the information I have at that time, I'm basing
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it on that. Now, a month and a half later, private investigator Lee Wilson was at the Doherty County
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Police Department picking up those photos from the scene. I'm waiting on the receipt for my payment
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and I start flipping through the photographs. It wasn't much, but Lee was noticing things he
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thought investigators had missed. And I got to like the fourth, fifth photograph in the packet
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and the police chief was standing in the hallway and I said, chief, you got a problem.
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You got a problem. I knew that scene had been manipulated. He took us through those photos on an iPad What immediately stands out to you if you can show me You note here his hand is laid over the gun
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There's two fingers laid across the handle of the gun, but nothing on the trigger.
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The other thing is, if you look, the gun is tucked up under his right leg. So you're thinking, how would the gun have gotten under his leg?
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Yeah. Lee knew that with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, there likely would have been blood on Jake's hand, but none was visible.
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Lee also noted the state of the bed around Jake. To him, it looked like Jake had been moved.
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There's a bath mat behind his head. Look at the sheets, the rippling of the sheets.
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Look how tight the sheets are over here. Look at the rippling there. What does that say to you?
00:30:43
Somebody's trying to pull that body back up onto the bed. To test his theory, he asked a couple of colleagues to take a look.
00:30:51
I had a couple of friends that were still in law enforcement that had done a number of death investigations,
00:30:57
gave them no background, just sent the photographs. And both of them came back and said, that's a staged scene.
00:31:03
Immediately they said that? Yeah. I just wanted to see if they were seeing what I saw.
00:31:08
And they did? Yes. If the scene was staged, that meant Jake hadn't killed himself.
00:31:14
He was murdered. And the only other person in the house was Susan. What had started as an unspoken suspicion in Jake's family was now out in the open.
00:31:27
We all had our own kind of suspicions, but we were not talking about it to each other.
00:31:35
So all of you had some sort of sneaky suspicion somewhere? Yes. In order to dig deeper and get access to Jake's records and property, Lee had Rachel petition the court to become executor of his estate.
00:31:49
After Susan found out, she left Albany. There was a U-Haul at our house, and she was loading up everything, and then she booked it right to Florida.
00:31:57
So when you go back in there, I mean, the house... Filthy. Unrecognizable. Filthy.
00:32:04
Rachel's father had been dead two months when she recorded this video of the house.
00:32:09
Today is August the 29th, 2014, at approximately 4 p.m. Never cleaned. Trash everywhere.
00:32:19
And there were some things missing too. Everything. Everything from washer and dryer were no longer there.
00:32:26
Kitchen table, dining room set, no longer there. She had completely vacated the house.
00:32:31
We had a plethora of childhood heirlooms, no longer there. You can blatantly see how it was left.
00:32:38
Just left nothing but her trash. This house has never been disturbingly dirty. Susan had the bloody mattress moved to the yard,
00:32:48
but the bedroom still had not been cleaned. There's blood splatter on the floor.
00:32:54
Never cleaned up. More blood. This is where the bullet hit the wall. You can see that this dripping on the wall
00:33:10
is possibly, I'm assuming, brain matter. The state of things confirmed to Jake's family
00:33:19
something was not right. And to them, that something was Susan. Well, she wasn't who she portrayed herself to be.
00:33:40
In the weeks and months after Jake Embert's death, his family grew more and more suspicious that his wife Susan was hiding something.
00:33:49
They didn't like how she behaved after the shooting, but the truth was they'd had issues with her even before that.
00:33:56
Will lived with Jake and Susan part-time. He remembers lots of yelling, he says, by Susan.
00:34:02
What would she say to your dad? He accused him of cheating all the time. Susan would drink and pick fights.
00:34:09
That had to have been a really difficult dynamic. I didn't understand it. I remember I was there for two occasions that the police showed up.
00:34:15
Both of them were really unfounded. Nobody got arrested. Now they thought back to that rushed wedding at the courthouse.
00:34:24
Will had expected to be the best man, but the wedding happened without him or his sister.
00:34:29
Was it surprising to you that he got married without either of his kids there? Very.
00:34:37
Yes. Rachel had long wondered what drew them together. Now she went looking for clues.
00:34:43
I hacked into my father's Facebook account. I figured out the password, all these Facebook
00:34:51
messages between my dad and Susan, pages upon pages upon pages upon pages. And then I get to
00:34:57
a part in the Facebook message right before they get married, where Susan says to my dad,
00:35:03
She's not feeling well. Her stomach is hurting. She just took a pregnancy test and it came out positive.
00:35:12
I was floored. That is what signified why my dad married her. Was she in fact pregnant?
00:35:20
Oh, absolutely not. And once they were married, there was something else that bothered the family.
00:35:26
They had always known Jake to be responsible with his money. But Susan took over the bills and soon they had serious financial problems.
00:35:35
Jake called Yvonne for help. And I could hear her telling him to do it. This is on the phone.
00:35:41
What was she saying? Ask her for money. Ask her for more money. And this is something your brother has never done.
00:35:49
Never. In all your years. Never. Not ever. No. And then there was Jake life insurance They weren even married six weeks when he said Susan pressuring me to change my life insurance beneficiary
00:36:05
To her? To her. And I said, Jake, you have an underage son. I think you should think about that.
00:36:14
He said, I heard he did it. And he said, Yvonne, Susan will take care of Will if anything happens to me.
00:36:20
Yvonne wasn't so sure, and she was apparently right to not trust Susan. My investigation showed there was actually a completely different side of this woman that the family didn't know,
00:36:33
and they had strong reason to believe Jake didn't know. A different side meaning what?
00:36:39
Well, she wasn't who she portrayed herself to be. Susan had been married three times before.
00:36:45
Lee spoke with two of her ex-husbands. She used to drink, but I don't know what she does now.
00:36:50
Right, but when y'all were married, it was the drinking. Oh, God, God almighty, was it ever.
00:36:55
She's always been messed up in the head. I mean, there ain't no two ways about it.
00:36:59
She also had things in her background, about 15 years, where she had encounters with law enforcement.
00:37:06
What were those interactions? There was several arrests down in Florida. Her record includes convictions for trespassing, resisting arrest, and several DUIs.
00:37:16
Susan and the kids were no longer speaking, but Rachel and Will told Lee everything they could remember
00:37:22
about how Susan described the shooting that morning. So the first thing is, she's just getting out of the shower,
00:37:29
heard the bang, went back there, found my father. Just out of the shower, but Will remembered how Susan looked
00:37:36
when he pulled up minutes later. She looked like she was ready to go. I mean, she's fully dressed, makeup, hair, everything.
00:37:45
Later that night, Rachel recalled Susan telling another version of what happened.
00:37:50
She said, I was by the computer desk, heard the bang, I went back there, and I found your dad.
00:37:56
And that's different from what she told you that morning. So different. Susan spoke with Yvonne that same night and added yet another detail.
00:38:04
And she said, well, I was blow-drying my hair, and I went to the computer. You know where that is, right, Yvonne?
00:38:11
And I yelled back to Jake, I'll be right back. I have to straighten my hair. And boom.
00:38:17
Those small inconsistencies didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but now they seemed important to the family.
00:38:23
At this point, what are you thinking happened? She killed my brother. Was the rest of your family thinking the same?
00:38:28
Yes. By then, Susan had left the state. She wanted nothing to do with Jake's family or their search for answers.
00:38:37
And then the phone rang. This is Susan Embert. Susan would have her own story to tell.
00:38:45
You were the only other person there, Susan. Did you shoot your husband? No, I did not.
00:38:50
Am I really hearing this? I could not pick my mouth up off the floor. And just when they thought it was over?
00:38:56
I mean, typically, that's where the story ends. You might think. Private Eye Lee Wilson had been investigating Susan Embert for a couple of months when,
00:39:18
out of the blue, he got a phone call. This is Susan Embert. How did she know that you were even looking into her?
00:39:26
Her words were that she heard I'd been asking about her. I don't know why I'm being investigated.
00:39:32
They're asking questions about me and stuff. I don't understand why. If it's any questions, I'd rather not answer any because I haven't done anything I could say that.
00:39:40
As you talked to her, I mean, what vibe did you get from her? How did she sound over the phone?
00:39:44
She was fishing, trying to figure out what I knew. Lee talked to Susan several times.
00:39:50
Each time, she insisted she had nothing to do with Jake's death. Are you doing okay?
00:39:55
Yeah, no, I'm trying to. But I don't know what you're wanting from me. All I know, my husband's death was June 28th.
00:40:07
It was closed out that day. I don't know why he did it. She said she was grieving.
00:40:12
I cry every single night, okay, every other day about this stuff. And that all she really wanted from Jake's family was to be left alone.
00:40:21
I'm trying to move all of my life and I'm trying to, you know, survive out here.
00:40:25
That's all I'm trying to do. In each conversation, Lee prodded her for any bit of clarity.
00:40:30
It would probably be a little bit easier if the family had some answers too. You don't seem to feel it.
00:40:37
I don't, that's what I'm saying, Mr. Wilson. I don't have an answer. And then she was done.
00:40:45
1.440 p.m. I'm sure she hung up on me. The phone calls didn't yield any new information about that morning,
00:40:53
but Lee wasn't done digging. Jake's family pushed his investigation in an entirely new direction.
00:40:59
They suspected the shooting was not the first time Susan tried to kill her husband.
00:41:05
All of us kept coming back to the conclusion because of how sick he was, because of the only common denominator was when she entered his life and the rapid decline.
00:41:19
Maybe it was a possibility that she could be, in fact, poisoning my dad. Poison? Well, as Jake's family saw it, it seemed the more Susan nursed Jake, the worse he got.
00:41:30
There were the two sudden heart attacks, his serious GI issues, and that onset of unexplained seizures.
00:41:38
Yvonne struggled to understand this new symptom. She recalled asking Susan, the nurse, about Jake's meds.
00:41:45
I said to her, he shouldn't be having seizures. There's not heart medicine that causes you to have seizures.
00:41:53
Yvonne says even before her brother died she started to question Susan medical knowledge I mean you know she said she was a nurse i just didn take that i got online and researched it did you ever find any evidence that
00:42:05
she was a nurse no in fact my investigation showed that she had gone to registered to go to a nurse's
00:42:13
aid school similar to what they call a cna in georgia but she didn't even complete that
00:42:19
It was Susan who administered all of Jake's medication and Susan who cooked all of his meals.
00:42:26
Around the same time, Jake's dog Zoe started having stomach problems, too. She started throwing up and going to the bathroom in the house.
00:42:33
I mean, she she was an older dog, but it just started happening. Like older dogs, they start to kind of get incontinent.
00:42:42
Was that happening there? Yeah, but it just out of nowhere. Like it took my dad by surprise.
00:42:47
It took me by surprise when she started getting real sick. It was Susan who took Zoe to the vet to get checked out and returned empty-handed,
00:42:56
telling Jake the vet had ordered she'd be put down. My personal belief is she was poisoning the dog, maybe perhaps testing some of her point.
00:43:05
I don't know whether it was or whether she just wanted to get rid of Zoe, but it shows her mindset.
00:43:10
It doesn't surprise me that she killed Jake if she did that to that man's dog. This was just a theory.
00:43:17
They would need forensic evidence to prove it. And at Susan's direction, Jake's body had been cremated the day after his death.
00:43:25
But Yvonne had an idea. I said to Rachel, you need to go to the house and get Jake's hairbrush.
00:43:33
And she said, what? She said, why? Because that's what she always does. Why? Why?
00:43:39
I said, Rachel, just get it. Get a brown paper bag. Put the hairbrush in the bag.
00:43:45
Don't tell anybody you have it. So you're directing her to take it and bag it for evidence?
00:43:49
Mm-hmm. Pretty much. You basically have a detective's mind at this point. No. I just watched Dateline.
00:43:58
Rachel played detective. She went back to the now-deserted house. She found one of her dad's brushes and handed it over to Lee.
00:44:07
Jake's family saw themselves as investigators, uncovering the truth. But if you ask Susan Embert, they were just reaching for the perfect scapegoat.
00:44:16
They don't know me. I don't know why they're lying. I have no idea. You're maintaining that all of these people are lying.
00:44:36
I don't have nothing to hide from nobody, and I still don't. Susan Embert's story was entirely different than the one being told by her husband's family.
00:44:45
She says when she and Jake first got married, their life was nearly perfect. I had a good husband and he had a good wife and I had a stepson that I loved.
00:44:56
It was nice. Susan says she felt accepted by her husband's family and insists they were all invited to the courthouse wedding.
00:45:05
She remembers Jake even moved up the date to accommodate their schedules. Will is saying that he had no idea that he would have been there.
00:45:12
He wanted to be there and be his father's best man, but that he was blindsided when he found out after the fact.
00:45:19
He knew the date that we were going to get married, and he also knew the date was moved up.
00:45:24
Are you saying that Will is mistaken? I think so, yes. There were some Facebook messages between you and Jake where you told him that you were pregnant.
00:45:33
Did that play a role in the timing of your wedding? I never told him I was pregnant, that I know of.
00:45:40
You don't remember Facebook messages that you sent to him saying you took a test, your stomach was feeling uncomfortable?
00:45:46
Oh, yeah. I took a pregnancy test and it said positive, but I knew I wasn't. I didn't think I was pregnant. I didn't know.
00:45:54
Susan believes Jake's family has been twisting her words. She denies ever telling them she was a nurse.
00:46:00
You did not lead them to believe that. I told him I worked in the nursing field.
00:46:04
Actually, I said the nursing field and the medical field because I have a lot of certificates and stuff like that in the medical field.
00:46:14
And Susan says Jake had money troubles before they got married. It was only when his house went into foreclosure, she says, that he admitted it.
00:46:23
He said that he used his money unwisely or didn't use it wisely, that he would buy him and his son real expensive things like bows and arrows and guns and all kind
00:46:39
of stuff like that. But he raised his hand and took blame for it, you're saying? Yes.
00:46:43
That it was his fault? Yes. As you learned about this financial situation, did it have an impact on your relationship,
00:46:51
you and Jake? Well, I mean, to me, I was not really worried about it. I mean, I was worried to a certain extent, but I wasn't because I knew that with me and him together, we could work it out.
00:47:05
We could get it worked out. They were inseparable, says Susan. And she claims it was Jake's idea for her to be the beneficiary on his life insurance policy.
00:47:14
After all, she was his wife. He said he had this and that, and he needed to change it over to me.
00:47:20
And I said, OK, well, whenever you want to do it, we'll do it. The sister Yvonne says that just within weeks of getting married, that you were pressuring him to change the policy so that you were the beneficiary.
00:47:32
That's not true. You never asked him? No. You never said pressured? No. Suggested?
00:47:41
No. And then there was that day in 2014. She took us through her version of that morning.
00:47:48
It was around 9 or 10 a.m. and she was getting ready for the day, she says, talking to Jake while he stayed in bed.
00:47:54
We was just talking. I was talking about going through the race, as a matter of fact.
00:47:59
Yeah. Going to the races? Yeah, we were going to the races. That day? That night.
00:48:04
What was he saying about it? I was asking him if he still wants to go. Yeah. What did he say?
00:48:11
He said, I don't know, probably, or something like that. He didn't seem real excited.
00:48:16
Susan told us she went into another room, and what she says happened next is yet another version of what she was doing when the gun went off.
00:48:25
I was in the living room. I went to get my vapor cigarette, believe it or not. Yeah, my vapor cigarette.
00:48:38
And I heard the gun go off. What happened then? I ran down the hallway. And I fell going down there and the door was cracked open about that much.
00:48:48
Take me back to that moment when you first saw Jake. I was ecstatic. I thought I was going to lose my mind.
00:48:59
and I didn't know what to do, so I called 911 like I was supposed to do. I didn't know what to do.
00:49:03
That's what I did. I called 911. My husband just shot himself. You were the only other person there, Susan.
00:49:11
Did you shoot your husband? No, I didn't. And then stage the room to look like a suicide?
00:49:15
No, I did not. No. Did you poison Jake Embert? No, I did not. Nope. I wouldn't have poisoned somebody I loved.
00:49:28
No. I wouldn't poison anybody. Did you poison the dog? No. If people were to look at the situation, knowing that it was just you, just him, you were in charge of his meals, you prepared the food,
00:49:41
people would say that you had plenty of opportunities to put things in there, to poison your husband over a period of time.
00:49:49
How do you explain that? I can't explain that because I did not poison my husband.
00:49:54
I would not have done it. We all ate the same food. I have to ask Susan, in our interview, in our conversation, you have repeatedly said that a lot of people are lying about you, from Jake's family to his sister, other people. How is it that so many people are lying about you?
00:50:14
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why they're lying about me. They don't even know me enough to lie about me. But they don't know. I mean, I don't even talk. They don't know me. I don't know why they're lying.
00:50:27
I have no idea. You're maintaining that all of these people are lying. No matter how much Susan declared her innocence, Lee Wilson kept working and finding what he says is proof she murdered her husband.
00:50:39
He was so confident in his evidence that he presented his findings to the coroner and the district attorney, Greg Edwards.
00:50:46
Edwards had his investigators pour over Wilson's work and came to a conclusion. And in my immediate opinion, you know, this was a staged crime scene.
00:50:57
and a homicide that needed to be prosecuted. Another major move, the coroner changed his findings on Jake's death certificate from suicide to homicide.
00:51:07
Investigators tracked Susan down in Florida, the moment Jake's family had long been waiting for.
00:51:13
She's going to get arrested. In February 2015, a group of investigators swarmed Susan's front door.
00:51:19
They said, Georgia wants you. I said, for what? And they said, homicide. title. Susan was arrested on charges of malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault.
00:51:32
That had to have felt surreal for you. It did. It was worth every minute to get to that point.
00:51:37
But there was still a long way to go. Susan would go on trial and try to explain herself
00:51:42
and her words to a jury. And what she would say would leave everyone in the courtroom stunned.
00:51:48
Why did you tell the 911 operator that Jake Ember had sexually transmitted disease?
00:51:57
I didn't say that. Four months after Susan Embert was arrested, the district attorney called Lee Wilson.
00:52:19
There was news, and it was about that hairbrush Rachel collected from her dad's house.
00:52:24
The DA's office had sent it out for testing, and the toxicology results were in.
00:52:30
What did those results show? It showed that Jake had high levels of different pesticides.
00:52:38
Bede is the common name that we know it by. And there was an antifreeze. When you got those results, those lab results, what did that tell you about Susan Embert?
00:52:47
She was a cold-blooded murderer. It's pretty hard to believe. And for a while, I blamed myself.
00:52:56
But you know that wasn't your fault. I protected him his whole life. This time, I didn't.
00:53:11
But I didn't know I needed to. Most of the state's case was circumstantial. circumstantial. Now the lab results gave prosecutors something they could sink their teeth into.
00:53:22
The DA tacked on another aggravated assault charge related to the poisoning in addition to murder.
00:53:28
But there was delay after delay. You all have quite a waiting game ahead of you. Oh gosh, so long,
00:53:35
yes. Four and a half years. Yes. In December 2019, the trial finally got underway.
00:53:41
Jake ever killed himself, we're going to show you that that's not so. The prosecution laid out its case, arguing that Jake was poisoned before he was shot.
00:53:51
Deet insect repellent antifreeze and various other heavy metals These toxic chemicals could have only been in his body only in his body from direct ingestion
00:54:09
If the state was right, and Susan Embert was in fact trying to kill her husband with poison,
00:54:14
why shoot him? Lee Wilson pointed to the timing. Jake had an upcoming doctor's appointment where they planned to run some tests.
00:54:22
And sooner or later, some lab report would have shown some sort of level in his blood or some of the tests that was inordinate.
00:54:30
And they would have, in all likelihood, gone to exploring the poisoning aspect of it.
00:54:35
So you're saying that she felt that she would have soon been exposed? It's my belief. You know, and I think he just wasn't dying quick enough.
00:54:43
As evidence of her premeditation, the state called this man to the stand, Douglas Buckner, a fellow race car lover.
00:54:51
About two weeks before Jake was shot, Buckner came by the house to buy Jake's Firebird.
00:54:56
And at one point, he was alone with Susan. I was like, well, what's going on with Mr. Jake getting rid of his car?
00:55:02
She was like, well, he's not in good shape. He's not going to be here much longer.
00:55:06
And he wasn't around for much longer because, prosecutors say, Susan shot Jake. Then she worked hard, they argued, to redirect investigators.
00:55:15
The prosecutor played Susan's 911 call. He had two hard days on his tire hurting.
00:55:20
The DA asked the jury to listen carefully to this part. We got married about two years ago, and I found out he was gay.
00:55:29
I didn't know this, and I didn't give my heart to him. I said, you know, so long, just tell me what's wrong.
00:55:34
Well, he was gay, and then he got these diseases and transmitted diseases. Jake Embert was gay and had transmitted diseases?
00:55:43
What was Susan talking about? Susan Embert, within seconds, 30 seconds of starting the call, begins to lay out why Jake Embert supposedly killed himself.
00:55:56
Unprompted. Unprompted. You know, he's gay, he has these diseases. It shows premeditation. She had thought this out and was going to say that after having done the act.
00:56:09
On the stand, Yvonne testified her brother was not gay and Susan was lying. Was he holding some secret that you didn't detect all the years you've known him?
00:56:20
No. The prosecution brought up another apparent inconsistency in the 911 call. Susan told the dispatcher she didn't touch Jake.
00:56:29
All right, ma'am, don't touch him or anything, okay? I'm sorry. But Will testified that when he saw her at the scene...
00:56:35
I remember seeing her on her hand. It looked like blood to me. Susan's defense team had one clear message.
00:56:44
The coroner's first determination was the right one. This was a suicide, the kind of death that can be hard to accept.
00:56:52
Nobody can understand why he did it. They planned their counterattack to the state's narrative around Susan.
00:56:58
They called her to the stand and asked her directly about that 911 call. Were you sincere at the time when you were having that conversation on the 911?
00:57:10
I was very sincere. What state of mind would you describe you were being in? A bad state of mind.
00:57:20
I was ecstatic. As for telling the dispatcher Jake was gay, I don't know why I said that.
00:57:26
I had no proof that he was gay. She did testify that she and Jake were having intimacy issues.
00:57:32
I asked him, I said, do you have another girlfriend? What prompted all that? Because our sex life went down and he didn't seem like he was interested in me anymore.
00:57:49
I'm sorry? Our sex life went down and I didn't think he was interested in me anymore.
00:57:54
During that call, you told the operator that Jake was gay and had transmitted diseases.
00:58:02
Are either of those two things true? No. The transmitted disease, they had that wrong.
00:58:08
I said he had PTSD. They said I said STD. No, it was PTSD. I have the 911 call, and I want to bring it up so we can listen to it together.
00:58:19
Okay. Well, he was saying, it's not a disease, it's a transmitted disease, huh? But you said transmitted diseases.
00:58:26
I said, no, I didn't hear that. I know I said PTSD. I thought that's what I said.
00:58:33
Why bring up those two details, that he was gay and had transmitted diseases, especially if you're saying now that you didn't believe that to be true? Why say that on the 911 call?
00:58:45
Because that's the last thing I said to him before I walked out of the room to get my vapor cigarette. And I thought maybe it might have had something to do with why he did what he did.
00:58:55
So you were. And I've had to live with that last words all these years. That's my last words.
00:59:03
So in the moments before he died, you all were arguing. I was arguing. I asked him a question.
00:59:10
You asked him, are you gay? Yes. What did he say? He didn't say anything. That conversation was a new detail she never told the family or investigators.
00:59:21
And I have to ask, in a situation like this, obviously details, granular details are important. The story that you told on the stand that you're telling me is different from what Jake's family says that you initially told them. Both Rachel and Yvonne say that they heard different versions of that story. Why are there differences in those details?
00:59:44
Maybe they didn't hear the whole story. I don't know, because that's what happened.
00:59:49
But you're saying all along you've told one story. That is the story I told. The one I just told you Susan never wavered on her innocence telling the jury what she told us She didn poison Jake and she definitely didn shoot him
01:00:05
My husband committed suicide that day. But would this sway the jury? We the jury find the defendant, Susan Hembert.
01:00:12
I mean, typically, that's where the story ends. You might think. It had been more than five years since Will Embert arrived at his father's house on that June morning.
01:00:35
Five years since Susan Embert told him Jake was dead. Being in that courtroom, that brought you again into the same room with Susan.
01:00:43
For really the first time, almost since it happened. Right. That couldn't have been easy.
01:00:48
Yeah, it was a very uneasy feeling. And now Susan's fate was in the hands of 12 jurors.
01:00:54
They deliberated for less than an hour. We the jury find the defendant, Susan Embert, count one malice murder guilty.
01:01:03
Guilty of murder and aggravated assault. I mean, are there words to describe that moment for you?
01:01:09
No. It was just, I can't use the word happy, I guess, but you're just glad to know that she's going to pay for what she did.
01:01:19
Susan Embert was sentenced to life in prison, with 10 years tacked on for the poisoning charge.
01:01:25
I mean, typically, that's where the story ends. You might think. Not this time. While Jake's family finally tried to move on, Susan's daughter, Krista, could not.
01:01:36
I felt like my entire being, my entire soul was shattered. I just lost my best friend, my mom.
01:01:43
I can't call my mom just to say, hey, anytime I want to. I have to wait on her schedule.
01:01:47
I have to talk to her on a tablet. Like, I can't hug my mom. Susan assured her daughter it wasn't over.
01:01:55
I knew one day I'd be leaving because I knew one day the truth will come out. I knew I'd be going home.
01:02:00
I just didn't know when. She found a new lawyer to mount an appeal. There's been so many errors in this case.
01:02:06
It was just like one after another. Defense attorney Jen Hyman was fresh out of law school when she took Susan's case.
01:02:13
This was actually the first motion for new trial that I worked on. Hyman scrutinized every part of the case, the investigation, the evidence, testimony, even the jurors.
01:02:25
So you just ran some of the names through Google just to see what popped up. Yeah.
01:02:31
She found something and it was big. One of the jurors had some criminal history.
01:02:38
So you see this information and you knew that you had found something major. Absolutely, yes.
01:02:43
The juror was a felon, and while there is a process to restore rights to serve on a jury, that had not happened.
01:02:50
And no one from the court or the district attorney's office caught it. That was grounds to overturn Susan's conviction.
01:02:57
Should your office be taking a closer look, double-checking things like this when you're seating a jury?
01:03:03
Yes. We now require documentation indicating they are not disqualified from serving as a juror.
01:03:09
So we just double down on making sure that that's reviewed. An important fix, but too late for Jake's family.
01:03:18
And the mistake was costly. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, family. Thank you, attorneys.
01:03:25
I love y'all. After more than four years in prison, Susan Embert walked out a free woman.
01:03:32
They called me and they told me that Susan was being released. And that is like I was astounded.
01:03:39
What do you mean she's being released? How do you even process this? You know, I'm angry.
01:03:43
I'll be honest. Yeah. I'm very angry. How did this transpire? How? Jake's family felt the mistakes and wasted time had plagued the process from day one.
01:03:55
And now with Susan's release, they would have to start again. What do you even do with that news?
01:04:01
Question the whole judicial system. Are you just thinking to yourself, there's this pattern of people just missing things, folks not doing their jobs?
01:04:11
Exactly. Susan would have to stand trial all over again, this time with a new jury.
01:04:17
But her new attorney had a plan. We immediately started working on the motion to get the case dismissed.
01:04:23
On what grounds? So it's a speedy trial violation. A lot of people are probably familiar with the fact that you have a right to a speedy trial, but most probably aren't familiar with how that actually works.
01:04:36
The defense argued that now too much time had passed since she was first charged, a delay that violated her rights.
01:04:44
And so you're saying that because that felon was on the juror, that was thrown out.
01:04:50
And it's almost like saying a trial never happened in the first place. It's exactly like saying that.
01:04:55
And so now you're starting the clock from back in 2014 when she was first charged.
01:05:00
Exactly. The judge agreed the delay was unfair to Susan. It was a critical decision that meant she would not face another trial.
01:05:09
All charges against her were dropped. It was amazing. Getting a murder case dismissed is, you know, an amazing feeling.
01:05:19
It wasn't long after that ruling when we sat down with Susan. We've talked about you walking out of prison.
01:05:25
You're out now on a technicality. What would you say to people who look at you and say, she got away with murder?
01:05:36
What would I say? What would you say to those people? I'd say, no, I didn't because I didn't do it.
01:05:42
I got away with telling the truth. And that's what set me free. I didn't get away with anything.
01:05:49
I know the truth. God knows the truth. And people that know me know the truth. Susan family members were not her only supporters Her ex Glenn Melton also stood by her Would you ever think that Susan is capable of murder No No way
01:06:06
No question. Ain't no question about it. Ain't no way she could do nothing like that.
01:06:10
The DA's office wasn't done. It appealed the judge's ruling about the speedy trial violation to the Georgia Supreme Court.
01:06:18
For Jake's family, another excruciating wait. I knew it wasn't over then. I knew we're going to probably have to start completely over.
01:06:31
He was right. The Supreme Court sided with the prosecution. Susan Embert would stand trial again.
01:06:38
Like, oh, yay, we're going to get her again. A retrial, but far from a repeat. because the prosecution's case was about to take a huge hit
01:06:48
and the defense had a new plan of attack. It wasn't evidence. It was just fantasy.
01:06:53
And it was just absurd. Fire shot through my entire body. Because you knew this wasn't good.
01:06:59
No, not at all. Susan Embert was headed to trial for a second time. Attorney Charles Cullen joined her defense team and examined all the evidence with fresh eyes.
01:07:23
The whole poisoning theory just needed somebody to step in and say, wait a minute, is this possible? Is this reasonable?
01:07:29
Does this make any sense at all? He thought the poisoning evidence was weak. Remember, Jake's body had been cremated quickly and there was no autopsy.
01:07:38
So it was all based on the hairs found in Jake's brush collected by Jake's daughter.
01:07:44
The first part is you have to ask, was there a chain of custody on the hair? Right. And there wasn't.
01:07:49
It wasn't gathered by the police or anything like that. And the lab that detected pesticides and antifreeze had its license suspended after accusations of misconduct.
01:07:58
So you're saying that evidence should have been nowhere near the first trial? No, because it wasn't evidence. It was just fantasy. And it was just absurd.
01:08:05
The idea that she's poisoning him with DEET, like she's spraying insect repellent on the food for years.
01:08:12
And you're saying that's just not reasonable. That's just not realistic. I'm saying that's not reasonable. That's not realistic.
01:08:16
Just weeks before the trial began, the defense asked the court to drop the poisoning charge and exclude all evidence of poisoning from the trial.
01:08:25
The judge agreed. A major victory for the defense. So this time around, poisoning wasn't even supposed to be mentioned.
01:08:35
Yes. During the proceedings. Completely excluded. Anything suspecting of poisoning, mentioning of poisoning.
01:08:41
When Susan Embert's second trial began in December 2025, the prosecution's case was whittled down significantly.
01:08:48
This case is about the murder of Mr. Jake Embert. On the first day of testimony, the state called coroner Michael Fowler to the stand.
01:09:00
This time, he sounded defiant. Does the Michael Fowler of today regret not ordering a medical examination of this body in 2014?
01:09:11
Not certainly. I will still stand on what I did on that part. It was gone, shot one in the head.
01:09:15
Okay. And now for the information that I received now about the hearsay, the antifreeze.
01:09:24
No, sir. It was that word. Antifreeze. Here I say the antifreeze. Fire shot through my entire body.
01:09:33
Because you knew this wasn't good. No, not at all. And it stopped the proceedings in their tracks.
01:09:40
Yep. What happened in the courtroom in that moment? Well, we made a motion for mistrial.
01:09:45
The judge declared a mistrial. So the case is over for now. Rachel, furious with all the mistakes and delays, sent a scathing letter to the DA's office.
01:09:58
I want to read you just a portion of this. Yes. Our father was murdered once. The justice system has destroyed us repeatedly ever since.
01:10:07
This is not delay. This is not normal. This is not justice. It's not. Those are very strong words.
01:10:14
And I mean every word of them. Every single word. The ball was dropped on so many different levels, whether it be from these government agencies, the corner, the judicial system.
01:10:29
You were not supposed to mention poison. No one have told me, didn't tell me that.
01:10:33
You had no idea. No one told me that I wasn't supposed to mention that. I'm standing on this.
01:10:37
They did not tell me that. We asked the district attorney. He says that you all left him hanging out to dry on that.
01:10:45
Well, I can only anticipate that maybe that might have happened. Maybe that did slip through the crack.
01:10:53
So I can't say that that did not happen. One month later, both sides were back in court, this time for trial number three.
01:11:03
The DA's office knew it was time for a new approach. Dowdy White was assigned as lead prosecutor.
01:11:10
This case touched everybody in the DA's office. At some point, every single person worked on this case.
01:11:16
This defendant intended to kill Jake and stage it as a suicide. The prosecutors knew they had to do more with a lot less evidence,
01:11:28
and that included getting the jury to focus on Susan's potential motive. Mr. Buckner.
01:11:33
Good morning. Jake's friend Douglas Buckner testified again, and prosecutor Guy Terry asked him to tell the jury about something new.
01:11:41
Did you receive any late night communication? Off and on, I received a text that had some content in it.
01:11:48
She, in fact, sent Buckner semi-nude and nude photographs of herself. Oh. And I finally told her that day, I was like, listen, when I see Mr. Jake, Saturday, I'm
01:12:00
with Mr. Jake all the texts. The prosecution said Susan was worried that if he showed Jake the texts,
01:12:06
Jake would divorce her. Jake finds out about what she's doing with Mr. Butler, he's gonna kick me out.
01:12:15
And the prosecution said Susan didn't want a divorce. She wanted Jake's money, specifically that life insurance policy
01:12:22
Jake had signed over to her. After his death, Susan received a payout, but Jake's children never got a dime.
01:12:30
However, prosecutors Doughty White and Guy Terry say the most important part of the case was the crime scene analysis.
01:12:37
The whole theme of the case was showing that suicide is not a reasonable option here.
01:12:41
We had to focus on the crime scene. The only solid evidence remaining from the crime scene?
01:12:49
Those photos. These pictures are absolutely crucial. They were absolutely critical in the entire analysis.
01:12:55
Prosecutors say the photo of the gun in Jake's hand was most telling. Given the power of a .45 caliber, the gunpowder in there, you're going to have a gun that kicks.
01:13:06
Are you saying it's likely that the gun would have had so much kick it would have just flown out of his hand?
01:13:08
It probably would have flown out of his hand and ended up on the ground over here.
01:13:13
Another critical detail, the gun was found in Jake's right hand. So this is Jake's right hand. Jake's left-handed.
01:13:23
That was new information in trial number three. If a person is going to commit suicide with a firearm, that's arguably the most important shot that person's ever going to make.
01:13:33
Do you make that shot with your non-dominant hand? A forensics expert confirmed what private investigator Lee Wilson had noticed about the bed.
01:13:41
This body appears that it has been moved. Are you able to conclude that this scene was manipulated, staged, and altered to appear as if it was a suicide?
01:13:54
It appears that way, yes. It all added up, the prosecution said, to one thing. Jake's death was not a suicide.
01:14:04
Every element of murder is met. But Susan's defense team had another explanation.
01:14:10
Something about Jake that even those closest to him didn't know. Were you aware that he's seeing a psychiatrist?
01:14:19
No. For more than 10 years Jake family and prosecutors had fixated on the botched police investigation
01:14:40
They believed that if the case had been handled differently, Susan's guilt would have been clear from the start.
01:14:45
But defense attorney Charles Cullen didn't see it that way. What would have changed for your client had there been a thorough police investigation?
01:14:53
She would have been exonerated. They would have been able to say, no, we did an autopsy.
01:14:58
Here's what we found. They could have said, you know, we tested her for GSR. There's no GSR on her.
01:15:04
There's only GSR on him. And the problem is that, you know, once you don't do that, all that evidence is gone, right?
01:15:11
All that evidence is lost. There will be no evidence that rules out suicide. As for the left-handed Jake being found with the gun in his right,
01:15:20
Cullen said plenty of people shoot with both hands. Like many other people who are either ambidextrous or own guns that are not altered to accommodate left-handed shooters like Jake Embert, he was capable and possibly even preferred shooting with his right hand.
01:15:39
Talking to his family, all of them say that they have never seen Jake shoot a gun with his right hand.
01:15:47
Why would he choose to put the gun in his right hand to take his life? So I think that it's important to remember that this family believes 100% that Susan Embert murdered him.
01:16:03
And I think that as the case has gone on, sometimes memories can change a little bit to sort of fit what you need them to fit.
01:16:14
He also said that Susan may have mixed up words and details, but it wasn't because she was guilty.
01:16:20
This is a person who kept saying, you know, I was ecstatic that day. I was ecstatic. I was ecstatic.
01:16:31
And she means hysterical, right? So this is someone who confuses words, mixes things up.
01:16:37
The defense maintained that the most logical explanation for what happened to Jake was also the simplest.
01:16:43
He was depressed, maybe more than his family knew. If you would just stand up and raise your hand.
01:16:48
But Jake had been a patient of Dr. Bruce Houston for more than four years. He was also prescribed fluoxetine, fluoxetine?
01:16:57
Prozac. Okay, that's also known as Prozac. Prozac is also an antidepressant. It similar to Lexapro it an SSRI Were you aware that he seeing a psychiatrist No Were you aware that he was being prescribed Lexapro
01:17:15
No. Prozac? No. There is such a stigma on mental health, but we all need a little bit of help sometimes,
01:17:23
and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's exactly the point prosecutor Dowdy White
01:17:29
tried to make during closing arguments with a surprising admission of his own. Ladies and gentlemen, I take an antidepressant every day.
01:17:40
Does that mean I'm suicidal? No, of course not. It was a pretty strong way to drive home this point that this medicine that the defense has brought into the equation is a non-issue for Jake.
01:17:54
Susan did not testify in this trial. Her defense focused on what they said the prosecution was missing.
01:18:00
ask, did they prove murder? They want you to just plug or ignore these holes in their case.
01:18:15
Susan's fade was once again in the hands of the jury. Her daughter Krista was confident.
01:18:21
You're supposed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody committed a murder or somebody
01:18:25
committed a crime and they couldn't do that. After a couple of hours, the jurors went home for the
01:18:33
night and I just asked that God give them the clearest hearts and the clearest minds and the
01:18:38
cleanest eyes. And when they returned the next morning, they have a verdict. A decision. Count
01:18:45
one, that is murder, guilty. As to count two, felony murder, guilty. What did you feel when you heard
01:18:54
the jury. Return that verdict. Like a weight lifted off my shoulders. 12 days later, Jake's
01:19:00
family returned to Albany for one final day in court. Susan's sentencing. There are no words that
01:19:07
could describe the pain that I feel inside. The same pain that I've had since June 28th, 2014.
01:19:15
You remember that day, don't you, Susan? While nothing can undo what's been done,
01:19:19
accountability matters for my brother, for my family, for justice. So no other family ever has to endure what we have at the hands of pure evil.
01:19:34
Susan was sentenced to life in prison. She's already filed a motion for a new trial.
01:19:40
It was clear that just getting up there and talking was hard It hard when she looking at you and you know what she did And up until this point whenever I looked at her she wouldn look at me
01:19:53
Did she look at you today? She did. What did you see in her eyes? Nothing. Nothing.
01:20:00
After 12 years, does this feel like justice? From the judicial aspect, yes. We're forever broken, you know.
01:20:07
The prosecutors have said that this case would never have gotten to this courtroom if it weren't for you.
01:20:13
Well, I mean, I appreciate the recognition, but it was just a lot of trying to undo what was wrongly done in the beginning.
01:20:24
And it culminated today with this sentence. But getting to this day had been a long process through a system that the family says caused years of frustration.
01:20:35
It's the coroner's fault. It's the investigating officer's fault. It's the on-call detective that didn't show up's fault.
01:20:42
It's the court's fault for not vetting their jurors better. That's the justice system's fault.
01:20:47
It's them not doing their job. Will was just 17 when his father died. In the years since, he served in the Army, got married,
01:20:56
and now he's chosen to be part of that very same justice system as a police officer.
01:21:03
I'm not going to do my job the way that they did theirs. More times than not, it is probably somebody's worst day.
01:21:10
So they need you to be 100%. So that's what I give them. When you go to calls like that, that's always in the back of your mind?
01:21:21
Always. What do you think your dad would say to know that you're a police officer now?
01:21:26
I think he'd be proud. I'm sure he is. A final note this evening. We cover these kinds of difficult cases every week.
01:21:37
During our Olympic break, one especially hit home for all of us. The disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, Savannah's mom.
01:21:46
Investigators are still desperately seeking clues. A reminder that anyone with any information can call the FBI's tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI.
01:21:57
Our hearts are with Savannah and the entire Guthrie family. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
01:22:04
We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.