00:00:00
The light's on in the room and I can hear him in there. I open the door and I see her laying there and my dad is kneeling next to her.
00:00:11
That was the first time I'd ever seen him cry. A quiet Christmas Eve. The house was decorated.
00:00:20
My mom was definitely into Christmas. A silent night shattered by angry words. They ended up fighting.
00:00:26
And a shot that leaves a wife and mother dead. I thought there'd been an accident.
00:00:32
The coroner, the local police, what was their conclusion? Suicide. I never thought anything different.
00:00:39
But someone did. She went to the Missouri State Highway Patrol to express their belief that this, in fact, was a murder.
00:00:47
A case, once closed, blows wide open. He started asking me questions. He goes, what did Jennings say to you about his wife having an affair?
00:00:57
Had an angry husband struck back. A mystery that divided investigators. It was obvious there was something that just wasn't right.
00:01:05
Divided a family. I don't want them around if that's how they feel. Will newly uncovered evidence reveal the truth about the night before Christmas?
00:01:15
When I found it, I just said jackpot. The only thing I've ever wanted was finally everyone to hear the truth.
00:01:23
I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with A Crack in Everything.
00:01:40
It was his secret that started it. A secret gift. It was Christmas Eve in the year 2006.
00:01:49
A little farm not far from a little town called Buffalo, Buffalo, Missouri. And on that farm, in the fine new house Brad and Lisa Jennings had built for their family,
00:02:03
the stockings were hung. The children were snug in their beds. And Lisa was sitting up very late, drinking wine and crying.
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Meaning, well, who knew? But for one thing, with Lisa in the way, Brad couldn't sneak that secret of his into her stocking,
00:02:23
which is what started it, the flaring argument, the slamming doors, the sudden silence,
00:02:29
before Amanda woke up to the sound of her dad on 911. And he's very hysterical, you know, he's crying, can't really say anything other than get here quick, get here quick.
00:02:43
I heard that two or three times. Such a complicated tale, with its secrets and lies and shifting loyalties.
00:02:52
And here, of all places, this throwback to an idealized past. We hunted mushrooms. We picked up walnuts.
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They were inseparable children, Brad and his older sister, Marsha. He was my playmate. We depended on each other.
00:03:09
Marsha became a nurse. Brad ran the farm, the center of their family, since 1853.
00:03:14
And that Christmas 2006, Brad and Lisa had been married 18 mostly happy years. We had a fairly good life.
00:03:24
There were three kids, Amanda, 16 that Christmas Eve, Dallas, who was 11 then. Lacey, Lisa's daughter from a first marriage, was 19 and had just moved into her own place in town.
00:03:36
And as Amanda said, life was fairly good. We would do lots of things, go on vacation a lot, go out and eat.
00:03:43
I mean, my dad made pretty good money, so we were good on that end. It seemed like a very good and stable environment.
00:03:53
Brad loved cars, especially classic muscle cars, and extra especially, the 1970 Chevelle Supersport he'd so carefully restored.
00:04:05
By the time he was 12, he was redoing motors and helping put motors in and out of different vehicles.
00:04:14
So Brad opened a used car dealership. He was a great people person. And I guess that's what you have to be when you deal cars and stuff.
00:04:23
And their mom, Lisa? Very pretty. She could be really happy and sort of like the life of the party kind of person.
00:04:31
Yeah, really fun being there. Well, Brad ran the farm in his car business. Lisa worked at a local Internet company.
00:04:39
I was really good at it. And she became like their top employee. At home, Lisa was the mom who actually liked video games.
00:04:50
With Dallas, mostly. Video games and movies. We had a big projector screen that we would put on the wall and like watch movies really big.
00:04:58
Did it seem like a happy household overall? Yeah. But of course there is, as Leonard Cohen used to sing, a crack in everything.
00:05:09
And in the Jennings' house, those were the sudden blow-ups when the mood went dark and the kids scattered.
00:05:16
They would fight maybe once every couple weeks or something. Mostly later in the evening, at night, after they'd been drinking.
00:05:24
They'd be yelling and maybe slamming doors, things like that. But just arguing about anything, nothing.
00:05:32
I never really thought too much about it. Anyway, now it was that calamitous Christmas Eve, 2006.
00:05:40
As always, there had been a happy dinner celebration with Brad's side of the family.
00:05:45
Christmas Eve, we would go to my grandma's. They're in town. And then, back home, games and stocking stuffing.
00:05:55
And of course I wake up real early and open all the presents Lisa had no idea that Brad had bought her a diamond ring got the kids to help him pick it out
00:06:06
Back from grandma's, he waited for his chance to hide it in her stocking. But Lisa kept fiddling on the computer and the kids were playing a board game.
00:06:15
I think it was Monopoly. We just played downstairs for a while and then eventually went up to our rooms.
00:06:23
It was well after midnight when they heard the raised voices downstairs. I heard the yelling and everything.
00:06:30
A normal fight like they would always have. And then a door slammed, which meant that Brad had gone out to his workshop to cool down.
00:06:38
But Lacey, home for the holiday, was furious. Another fight, and this one on Christmas Eve, no less,
00:06:44
and as usual over some stupid little thing, she was done. And so my sister decided to go downstairs and get into it with her.
00:06:51
I think one of the last things I remember my mom even saying was something like,
00:06:57
I would never disrespect my parents that way. Lacey was just fed up, was she? Yeah, she just couldn't believe they'd fight on Christmas.
00:07:04
Then, more door slamming and Lacey was out of there. She went back to her house in Buffalo.
00:07:11
So by the time she left, your dad was outside in the workshop, although he didn't really know where he was, right?
00:07:18
Well, he was outside. He does that a lot. I would go outside and go out to shop.
00:07:23
So Amanda sighed and closed her eyes and drifted off. And then sometime after 1.30 a.m., that loud, frantic sound, her father on 911.
00:07:34
She ran downstairs to her parents' bedroom. I opened the door and, you know, I see her laying there and my dad is kneeling next to her.
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And as soon as I had opened the door, he gets up and kind of pulls me out of the room.
00:07:50
And he's hugging me and crying. Their mother was dead. Of that there was no doubt.
00:07:56
But how? And why? And who? What had happened in that bedroom when we come back? I thought there'd been an accident.
00:08:08
The truth would be much worse. Did you have any inkling, any suspicion, that Brad might have had something to do with this?
00:08:20
Dallas Jennings was only 11 that awful Christmas morning in 2006, the morning he lost his mother.
00:08:34
And it's probably a blessing that something in his brain has blocked the memory.
00:08:38
A lot of it's a blur to me. Amanda, 16 at the time, remembers every dreadful detail.
00:08:45
It's just shocking. Obviously very upset, but didn't know. what to do, you know.
00:08:52
Yeah. It was very hard. And the ambulance arrived and the policeman. They all arrived and we had to leave the house so they could do all their work.
00:09:01
And so we went outside and waited in my truck because it was cold out. What, just huddled together in there?
00:09:09
Did you talk much? Just shock and mostly silence. I remember Dallas kept saying she was going to be okay.
00:09:16
He didn't really know what had happened because he didn't see her or nothing and no one was really saying what happened.
00:09:24
And my dad was just sitting over in the passenger seat, just a mess, and that was the first time I'd ever seen him cry.
00:09:32
News of this sort spreads very fast, but often in confused or incomplete or fuzzy bits.
00:09:40
And so when Brad's sister Marcia heard something happened at the farm... I didn't realize the gravity of it.
00:09:47
I thought there'd been an accident, and she was on the way to the hospital. It was anything but an accident.
00:09:54
Lisa was gone, dead at 39, killed by a bullet at close range to the head. Brad told local sheriff's deputies how he argued with Lisa,
00:10:03
then went out to his workshop to cool off. And when he came back in, maybe 20 minutes later,
00:10:08
he found her on the bedroom floor, his handgun nearby. So deputies tested Lisa's hands for gunshot residue.
00:10:16
They did the same with Brad and Lacey. That to tell them who fired the gun. And Lisa's right hand tested positive for gunshot residue.
00:10:27
Brad and Lacey came out negative. Meaning, it seemed to the coroner, that Lisa, for reasons unknown, must have killed herself.
00:10:36
Did it make sense to you that she would commit suicide? Nothing made sense to me that night.
00:10:41
Yeah, I bet. I had heard statements, you know, that she was troubled about reaching 40.
00:10:51
She had had cosmetic surgery. Could be a red flag. Brad and Lisa's brother-in-law, Paul Bryan, was stricken.
00:10:59
What did they miss? All the kids loved Aunt Lisa. She was just fun. Lisa had seemed so together.
00:11:06
She loved family events, loved having kids around. There was never a time that Lisa did not want the kids to spend the night or to stay.
00:11:15
And she might end up with five or six different children that spent the night. It was fine with her.
00:11:24
Yeah, she loved it. But now, this accommodating, fun-loving woman was dead. It was all very shocking.
00:11:30
And it's not like you've had a long illness or something to get prepared. This was just sudden.
00:11:37
Yeah. the idea that she would commit suicide so abruptly and violently like that that
00:11:46
wasn't something that would be expected no but of course the alternative was really quite unthinkable did you have any inkling any suspicion that brad might have had something to do with this I had none Brad called me on Christmas morning
00:12:06
And you could tell he was still terribly distraught. So, that morning I came over.
00:12:12
And he told me the whole story. And, you know, no. It never crossed my mind. In fact, after all the lab test results were in,
00:12:21
the Dallas County Sheriff and Coroner and Prosecutor, all officially ruled Lisa's death suicide.
00:12:28
The local newspaper, the Buffalo Reflex, quoted the prosecutor, who said, there is zero evidence to show otherwise.
00:12:35
So you had no sense anyway, no reason to think it was anything other than what the coroner and the sheriff said it was?
00:12:43
Absolutely not. But there were others in the family, and they were not so sure. Coming up
00:12:54
She went to the Missouri State Highway Patrol to express their belief that this in fact was a murder
00:13:01
And an investigator's prime suspect, Brad Jennings He started asking me questions about Brad
00:13:08
And he goes, what did Jennings say to you about his wife having an affair? When Dateline continues
00:13:15
It's a sweet little piece of America, Buffalo, Missouri, population 3,000 or so,
00:13:32
where people tend to know each other's business, and where Brad could have a best friend he met when they were both in diapers.
00:13:40
So, of course, Dale Potter rushed over to see Brad that very Christmas morning, He just kept saying, why, Dale? Why did she do this?
00:13:49
He was a mess. All those guns you see in the background there? Dale owns Buffalo's only gun and pawn shop.
00:13:58
So when Lisa's death was declared to be suicide and the sheriff returned Brad's gun, the one that killed her, Brad called Dale.
00:14:06
And he said, I don't really want the gun back. I can't imagine why you would. He said, do you want it?
00:14:11
I said, yeah, I do. I cleaned it up, just put it in the safe and forgot about it.
00:14:17
And the family tried to move on and didn't pay much attention when Lacey began saying odd things.
00:14:25
You know, when mom was murdered, blah, blah, blah. Murdered? Not that it was anything like an accusation or aggressive or unfriendly.
00:14:34
She didn't act any different with dad. She still came around. He still helped her.
00:14:40
But sometimes, the smaller your town, the less you know about what your neighbors are saying.
00:14:46
Behind your back, nothing in your face, nothing like that. It was way more subtle than that.
00:14:51
What do you mean? Probably everyone else was talking about it, but they didn't talk to us about it.
00:14:57
No, they didn't. But Lisa's younger sister, Sean, was talking. She saw a rocky marriage and her sister would not be a person that would have committed suicide.
00:15:08
This is Steve Polkin, writes a column in the Springfield News Leader called Polkin Around, which he did,
00:15:15
and discovered that Lisa's sister, Sean, got busy soon after that deadly Christmas morning.
00:15:21
In early January, she went to the office of the Missouri State Highway Patrol to express their belief that this, in fact, was a murder.
00:15:31
She lucked into a highly experienced detective named Dan Nash. A longtime investigator who's been involved in several high-profile murder cases in the Ozarks.
00:15:42
And when Sergeant Nash took one look at that file, something forensic seemed off.
00:15:48
He was inclined to agree with Sean. Didn't look like suicide at all. He was just struck by the fact that if Lisa Jennings had shot herself using her right hand,
00:15:59
that there would be more blowback from that wound than one drop of blood. Three months after that Christmas Eve,
00:16:05
Investigator Nash drove over to Brad's farm, told him he was looking at the case again.
00:16:10
And wanted the bathrobe that Mr. Jennings was wearing that night. The robe he had on when he said he found Lisa dead and held her in his arms.
00:16:20
Why three months later would a bathrobe be of any use at all? Surely it had been cleaned or something after this event.
00:16:28
Apparently it had not. Oh. Mr. Jennings had spent little time going back into that bedroom, where from his perspective, his wife had taken her life.
00:16:40
So Brad gave Nash the black bathrobe, and sure enough, still had blood on it. So they ran some tests and kept in touch with Brad.
00:16:49
He was questioned a couple of times. Then, a month later, this was April now, the sheriff came to call at Dale Potter's Gun and Pawn.
00:16:59
And he says, I'm here to seize the Jennings gun. Then, a few weeks after that, a guy in a t-shirt and khakis walked in.
00:17:06
Told me he was a sergeant with the Missouri State Highway Patrol. And he said, I'm here to investigate the murder of Lisa Jennings.
00:17:13
I said, what are you talking about? Murder? It was in the paper. You know, it was ruled a suicide.
00:17:18
And he said, no, he killed her. But that was an awe. Then he goes, what did Jennings say to you about his wife having an affair?
00:17:28
I said, he never said a word to me about his wife having an affair. Why was she?
00:17:33
And he said, yes, and we can prove it. I said, well, that explains a lot. He said, you mean why he killed her?
00:17:41
And I said, no. I said, why she did this? I said, maybe everything caught up with her, you know.
00:17:47
Meaning, thought Dale, something about the affair pushed her over the edge. Then Dale offered the sergeant a little family history I said you do know don you that her dad killed himself And he goes you full of crap He said her dad alive and he lives at Windyville
00:18:06
I said, no, you're full of crap. Her stepdad lives at Windyville. Her real dad killed himself out in Kansas years ago.
00:18:15
Another family suicide? An affair? Just where was this investigation going? Coming up, a determined detective.
00:18:28
He looked at me and told me straight up, I've never been wrong. And a confused friend.
00:18:34
What'd you think? I thought they made one of the worst mistakes I'd ever heard of.
00:18:38
Probably everybody in Buffalo, Missouri knew that Brad Jennings, the apparently grieving husband,
00:18:57
was now a murder suspect. Everybody waiting for something to happen. And in July 2007,
00:19:05
And seven months after Lisa's death, it did. We got about a mile from his house and two or three highway patrol sergeants and the sheriff stopped him and arrested him.
00:19:16
Took him to the county jail. What did you think? I thought they made one of the worst mistakes I'd ever heard of.
00:19:22
Later we were told there were people around that knew it was going to happen. People like Lisa's sister, Sean, who went to the highway patrol in the first place,
00:19:34
and Lisa's daughter from her first marriage, Lacey. We asked for interviews. They declined.
00:19:41
When my dad got arrested, Lacey and Sean showed up at the house to pick me and Dallas up,
00:19:46
and then my grandma showed up as well to pick us up, and my aunt and my grandma kind of got into it.
00:19:53
It sounds to me like that is sort of the moment when the family broke apart. That's when it really blew open.
00:19:59
That's when, you know, Lacey quit coming around and everything just fell apart. That evening, Brad's brother-in-law, Paul, who's married to Lisa's other sister,
00:20:10
said he met with the highway patrol sergeant who led the investigation. And I asked the one patrol officer if he'd ever been wrong,
00:20:17
that there was a small part of me that wished or hopes that he is correct, because if not, he's going to ruin a lot of people's lives.
00:20:25
And he looked at me and told me straight up, I've never been wrong. Never been wrong?
00:20:31
Never been wrong. Was this investigator Dan Nash? It was. Brad posted a million dollar bond and was allowed to remain free until his trial.
00:20:44
Brad's attorney said the state had no case. And every time that I spoke with him, he said it couldn't go to trial.
00:20:52
He didn't say it wouldn't. He said it couldn't. was still saying that the Friday before the trial was to begin, in August 2009.
00:21:00
He said, we'll go in there Monday morning and we'll see what motions are flying around.
00:21:07
But by midday Monday, the jury was picked and the trial began. How shocking was that?
00:21:13
It was very shocking. And we hadn't been there an hour until I was getting sick to my stomach just listening.
00:21:22
prosecution was just running rampant with it. That is, saying terrible things about Brad.
00:21:29
And I was wanting to jump up and object. Because to Marsha, it seemed like Brad's attorney, Daryl Deputy, wasn't objecting at all.
00:21:39
Mr. Deputy wouldn't say anything in Brad's defense. What was it like to be you sitting back there watching that?
00:21:47
It was the most miserable time of my life. And I didn't know what I could do. I wanted to stop it, and I didn't know how.
00:21:55
And Mr. Deputy would say, it's all going to come together here, and don't worry about it.
00:22:01
Maybe the attorney was thinking of the gunshot residue, or GSR. Remember, they found GSR on Lisa's right hand, but not on Brad's hands,
00:22:12
implying that Lisa shot herself. The prosecutor had an explanation. So the prosecutor says it's a logical inference from the facts of the case that Mr. Jennings, after he shot his wife, before he called 911, he washed his hands and washed his forearms.
00:22:32
And blood evidence. Investigator Nash was the expert the state put up, and he said that in his expert opinion, the way the spatter hit the wall and Brad's black bathrobe and Lisa's hand, it left no doubt that Brad fired the fatal shot.
00:22:47
But why would he do such a thing? An age-old reason, said the prosecutor. Lisa wanted out.
00:22:55
The prosecution at trial wanted to show that she was intent on leaving him, and she had an application at an apartment complex where Lacey had lived.
00:23:09
Lisa wouldn't end her life, said the state, because she was busy improving it. She'd bought nice clothes, had recently had cosmetic surgery.
00:23:18
The state presented witnesses that said she was in good spirits, and it's unlikely that someone who has cosmetic surgery and is feeling good about themselves would take their lives.
00:23:29
The defense didn't mention that Lisa's father died by suicide, or that she herself attempted suicide back in high school.
00:23:37
No secret in town back then. And nobody brought up the rumor that Lisa was having an affair.
00:23:42
But one curious thing did come up. The defense attorney in his closing argument made a rather fascinating point
00:23:50
about the bathrobe Brad was wearing when Lisa was shot. The defense attorney in his closing argument said,
00:23:57
they had that thing for two years. They didn't test it for gunshot residue, but they didn't.
00:24:02
So we could wrap this up in a heartbeat, whether he did it or not, if they had tested that.
00:24:08
Now that was interesting and a very good point. After all, if they found residue on the bathrobe, it would certainly point right at Brad.
00:24:18
But the moment passed, case went to the jury. And two hours and 24 minutes later, they found Brad guilty of murder.
00:24:27
And where else would this happen? They let him go home one last night before the sentencing began the following day.
00:24:35
And the next morning, he asked me to drive him back. And I think that's one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do.
00:24:47
Did you want to just say, let's go somewhere else, Brad? Let's just drive to Mexico or something.
00:24:53
No, that's not who we are. and I told him that I would fight with everything I had in me to correct it.
00:25:07
But what could one lone woman do? No legal training, no contacts, no pull. What indeed.
00:25:17
Coming up, a search for the truth. It was obvious there was something that just wasn't right.
00:25:24
And missing evidence. I took the photo, I texted it to Dwight, and just said, jackpot.
00:25:30
When Dateline continues. The day after Brad Jennings was convicted of murdering his wife Lisa,
00:25:46
he dutifully returned to court for sentencing. He got 25 years, and they led him away.
00:25:52
on a day that would have been otherwise auspicious. That was my first day of high school.
00:25:59
Did either of you ever think maybe he did kill her? Not even once. If you know him, even like at all, he's just not that kind of a person.
00:26:12
True, said Brad's big sister, Marcia. So she decided she had to do everything she could to help him.
00:26:18
Wasn't easy. Because he had two kids who needed to be cared for. He had payments that had to be made on the house, on the farm, on the cars.
00:26:29
He had a business that had to be wrapped up. And he had this huge problem of having been convicted of a crime you didn't think he committed.
00:26:38
So what does a person do in a situation like that? I had no idea. I didn't even know where to start.
00:26:46
But she knew she needed a better income. So she found a job that paid more, but required constant travel.
00:26:54
Come home on Thursday night and leave Sunday. And in the time you were home, you'd wash your clothes, say hi to the kids, go into the prison, see Brad, and get back on the plane again.
00:27:08
Yeah. The first appeal claimed Brad had inadequate representation to trial. I thought that was a no-brainer.
00:27:19
But it failed. Appeals court didn't agree. And Brad's trial lawyer, Daryl Deputy, said he served Brad well.
00:27:29
Anyway, Marsha hired more attorneys, but... I couldn't get them to talk to me. I couldn't get them to answer a question.
00:27:37
I couldn't get them to call me back. Did they send you a bill? Absolutely. I've got lots of bills.
00:27:46
This went on for months, years. She heard about a private investigator named Dwight McNeil,
00:27:52
but her then attorney told her, don't call him. So I sat on it for a little bit, and I was having a really bad day,
00:28:02
and I called, and Dwight picked up the phone, and I just started crying because it had been so long since anyone I called answered me And he did listen but I told her I wouldn look at the case Dwight was a former sheriff
00:28:23
He told her his job was catching bad guys, not getting them out of prison. But Marsha persisted, and so he agreed to see her in person.
00:28:33
I explained to her that if I concluded from my review of the file that there was any basis at all to believe that Mr. Jennings had murdered his wife,
00:28:44
that I would use whatever influence and whatever pressure I could to make sure he stayed in prison the rest of his life.
00:28:51
You could accept a deal like that? Yes, absolutely. So Dwight scanned the file. Just a quick look.
00:28:59
And this was strange. It was obvious there was something that just wasn't right.
00:29:05
Remember what the trial attorney said about the black bathrobe? Too bad they didn't test it for GSR, gunshot residue.
00:29:13
Dwight, with his years in law enforcement, lit up when he saw that. They must have tested the robe.
00:29:20
That should have been tested for GSR all the way up the right sleeve. Sure. If he fired the gun, there would have been GSR on that robe.
00:29:29
No such report existed for the testing of that sleeve of that robe in the file. Didn't make sense. Dwight began working with lawyer Lindsay Phoenix, who requested copies of all the lab reports from the Highway Patrol's crime lab.
00:29:45
I got a lovely letter from them saying, here you go, here's everything that we have. And it included every test except for the one that I was looking for.
00:29:52
But it had to be there. So Lindsay went in person to the State Highway Patrol. And I said, I want to examine every piece of evidence that you have.
00:30:01
And I brought a video camera and a cell phone camera, and I photographed everything, trying to be inconspicuous.
00:30:08
I didn't want to take a chance of me finding something and it disappearing. And that is when she found them, two small canisters.
00:30:16
And inside... The stubs from the gunshot residue test that were labeled robe. And I took the photo, I texted it to Dwight, and just said, jackpot.
00:30:26
and then I had to go through the rest of those boxes like I was still looking for something else
00:30:32
and act like it wasn't a big deal and I was ecstatic Those little stubs confirmed
00:30:38
a GSR test had been performed on Brad's row but where were the results? She asked the highway patrol for them
00:30:46
and they didn't send them to me So she wrote to them again and said alright, I know they're there
00:30:52
I have photographs of it I know they're there, send me the results and then they sent him.
00:30:57
And the tests were conclusive. There was no gunshot residue on Brad's black bathrobe.
00:31:04
Just as there wasn't any on his hands on the night Lisa died. Meaning Brad almost certainly did not fire the gun that killed Lisa.
00:31:13
But why didn't lead investigator Dan Nash reveal that? Well, he said he never received those results.
00:31:21
Plausible? Not in a heartbeat. No, I was a prosecutor before this. My spouse is a police officer.
00:31:29
Dwight's a police officer. We know the care that goes into building a case, and that's not a step that you skip.
00:31:36
Dan Nash had specifically asked for that test to be done. So, by now, Dwight was looking carefully at Dan Nash.
00:31:45
He talked to a retired judge. And he made it very clear that he had a lot of problems
00:31:51
with Mr. Nash's reputation for truth and honesty under oath. And from there, we started interviewing former prosecutors
00:31:59
and a number of former court personnel who expressed concerns about his reputation for truth and veracity.
00:32:09
Remember how at the trial Nash was presented as a blood spatter expert? He wasn't.
00:32:16
In fact, Nash had not even taken a basic bloodstain analysis class when he investigated Lisa's death.
00:32:22
He took a 40-hour course the following year, but was still not an expert when he testified at trial.
00:32:29
Dwight sought out the best in the field I found two of the world most renowned blood spatter experts He sent the crime
00:32:40
scene photos to both of them. And they both independently came to the same conclusion.
00:32:46
That Dan Nash was quite simply dead wrong. One of them wrote, the bloodstain evidence and the
00:32:53
presence of gunshot residue on the right hand of Lisa Jennings are consistent with a self-inflicted
00:32:58
gunshot wound. But as any lawyer will tell you, undoing a jury's guilty verdict is well
00:33:05
nigh impossible. So, what now? Coming up, a life interrupted. He missed out on me turning 16, me getting married. I have a kid now. He missed that.
00:33:19
He missed out on a lot. Will Brad Jennings miss even more? Dallas Jennings felt like a cheated young man, his father in prison, when neither he nor Amanda believed for a minute that he killed their mother.
00:33:43
He missed out on me turning 16, me driving for the first time, my graduation, me getting married. I have a kid now. He missed that. The birth of his first grandchild.
00:33:58
He missed out on a lot. But Brad's sister, Marcia, was still determined to bring him back to that world he was missing.
00:34:06
And with investigator Dwight's help, she finally found a father-daughter team of attorneys
00:34:11
who seemed to understand the case and the family. These were just salt-of-the-earth, small-town country people.
00:34:21
And they were stunned at the way the system had worked against Brad Jennings. First, Bob and Liz Ramsey read the trial transcript.
00:34:31
The first thing that jumped out at me is I don't recall seeing a defense attorney do so little for his client in my 38 years of practicing law.
00:34:44
Oh, come on. Not the worst, surely. It was certainly one of the worst. But what also jumped out was the work of that highway patrol investigator, Dan Nash.
00:34:56
Confronted about the unrevealed gunshot residue test that might exonerate Brad, Nash said he never saw the report, said it never made it to his desk.
00:35:06
If that test had been positive, would it have been lost in a fax machine? It's just incomprehensible that he wouldn't follow up and say,
00:35:15
hey, what happened to my gunshot residue test that I ordered? Well, he was either grossly negligent or he suppressed it deliberately.
00:35:25
No question about it. The issue of that unrevealed GSR test was huge. I thought it's a classic Brady violation.
00:35:35
It's the kind of evidence that makes a difference in a trial. So they elected to shoot for the moon, their one chance to overturn the jury verdict.
00:35:45
A habeas petition that claimed withheld evidence could have changed the result of the trial.
00:35:51
I don't promise anything to a client other than I'll give you my best shot. and all I told him was this gives you a shot.
00:36:01
Vanishingly few such petitions ever go anywhere. Still, they filed and waited and against all odds were granted a hearing.
00:36:10
We were very excited but cautious. It was almost like this little dim light at the end of a tunnel.
00:36:21
This was the hearing. in November 2017, almost 11 years after that terrible Christmas Eve.
00:36:28
Here, Brad's attorneys revealed the GSR result that suggested his innocence and the experts' blood spatter findings that did the same
00:36:37
and witnesses who questioned the honesty of Detective Nash. I think that his credibility was put at issue for the entire hearing.
00:36:46
Lawyers from the Missouri Attorney General office were there too and told the judge that what the defense came up with would not have changed the guilty verdict The case was so strong We wanted to hear from the attorney general office
00:36:58
from Sergeant Dan Nash and the highway patrol, and all declined our requests. And then months went by
00:37:07
and they all had to wait for the judge until February 8th, 2018. Finally, a ruling.
00:37:16
My first reaction was to go right to the last paragraph and see what the result was.
00:37:23
And the last sentence of his order is, at a minimum, the suppression of the gunshot residue test undermines confidence in that verdict.
00:37:36
Conviction overturned. It's the first time that we had had a positive outcome. It was wonderful.
00:37:46
The next day on the judge's order, Brad Jennings walked out of prison after eight and a half years and into the arms of the people who never for a minute gave up on him.
00:38:05
It's the kind of stuff that you dream about in law school. And I firmly believe that Brad is innocent.
00:38:12
So to walk him out was one of the greatest honors of my life. Like, I'll never forget that day.
00:38:16
We had all waited so long for it and wondered if it was ever going to happen. Yeah.
00:38:23
But it was one of the best days of my life. It was really awesome to see him walk out.
00:38:31
You know, that was... Knowing that he was going to come home with us, that was amazing.
00:38:36
That ride home had to be quite something, huh? It was. It was weird. It was the first time my dad's ever seen me drive.
00:38:43
Yeah. Yeah, I drove him home. Brad Jennings was a man of few words when he met us a few weeks later,
00:38:50
as if he was still afraid to believe it and let go. But we talked a bit about that Christmas Eve and the mystery of what so upset Lisa.
00:39:02
She was crying. That's one thing I asked her why she was crying. And she couldn't tell you?
00:39:08
Didn't want to tell you? Didn't want to talk, didn't want to say anything. It wasn't until years later, he said, that he learned she'd been having an affair with her boss.
00:39:18
And that man had just broken it off, meaning she was also out of a job. You know, she had told me she wasn't coming back to work the day before this.
00:39:28
He didn't understand it then. But now, maybe that was an answer to his long-ago question.
00:39:36
Why did she end her own life? Once he might have confronted the other man. Now, nothing to be done.
00:39:44
I don't even know where he's at now. That business shut that closed down now. In July 2018, the state attorney general's office announced it would not retry Brad.
00:39:55
As for the once close family, when we last spoke with him, they remained badly split.
00:40:00
Lisa's sister, Sean, and daughter, Lacey, still believed Brad was guilty. And for Brad?
00:40:08
Just like starting over again, though, you know. Brad clung to his kids, his sister, his mom, and those who believed in him,
00:40:17
to his ancestral farm and his other longtime love, the old Javel. But just after marking his eighth Christmas as a free man, Brad died in January 2026.
00:40:30
He was 69 years old. His sister, Marsha, who fought so hard to win Brad's freedom,
00:40:37
said her goal was always a simple one. I knew Brad was innocent. The only thing I've ever wanted was for finally everyone to hear the truth.
00:41:00
That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.