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Tonight on Dateline. I'm innocent. I've always been innocent. A dramatic new turn in a riveting case.
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The way I was portrayed, that's not how it went down at all. I want the truth to come out.
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You come home from school and your mom is missing. Yeah. You don't know what to do, don't know how to behave.
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I was told that a body was found. It is my wife. Law enforcement were just so focused on him.
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Well, he was having an affair, so he must have committed this crime. I am her closest friend.
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I betray her in the worst way, and she's gone. Did your dad say anything to you like, I didn't do this?
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Yes, he did, and I believe him. He's a master manipulator. How certain were you that Remy Ramsaran killed his wife?
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No doubt on my mind. We discovered that under Jennifer Ramsaran's fingernails was male DNA.
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The DNA underneath my wife's fingernails. It's not mine. Who is it? A wife murdered, a husband accused, and an ending that you won't see coming.
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I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Andrea Canning with The Perfect Life.
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Has anyone ever described you as quirky or odd or goofball? Absolutely. At Dateline, we meet a lot of big talkers, but few as big as Remy Ramsaran.
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If there's one thing about me, I can talk to anyone. Any question, ask me. I'll be more than happy to provide.
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He had lots to say about his happy life in his tiny upstate New York town. I had the perfect life. I have everything anyone would want.
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And when tragedy struck and the details of his so-called perfect life came tumbling out, Remy kept talking.
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Here's the thing. I have truth on my side. I don't have any deep, dark secrets. Now, a decade after we first spoke to him, Remy has more to say.
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You don't have any regrets about saying that? None whatsoever. Don't take my word for it. Hang on.
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So this is new information? This is absolute new information. New discoveries, new evidence, and a brand new ending.
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Bombshell. Bombshell. To understand how we got here, we need to go back to a cold winter night.
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December 11th, 2012. A worried Remy Ramsaran called 911. Okay, tell me exactly what happened.
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My wife left this morning between 10 and 11, and she hasn't been back, and I'm really freaked out.
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It was evening, and his wife Jen should have been home from a shopping trip. This is totally unlike her, and my friends have heard from her. I called my in-laws.
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The morning had started much like any other for the family. I remember seeing my mom that morning. I gave her the hug in the morning, and then I went to go make my breakfast.
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and lunch. Glenn, the middle child of three, was 10. Did she take you to school or did you take
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the bus to school? My dad drove us. Just like any other day? Yeah. Remy got back from dropping the
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kids off around 8 a.m. His wife Jen was in the kitchen. When I came home, Jen was eating Chobani
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yogurt and Kashi cereal at the table and she was on her iPod Touch. And then I went to the living
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room and i sent some emails and certain things to that effect remy was a project manager for ibm
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who worked from home most days jen took care of the house and kids that morning she was supposed
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to go to syracuse the mall in syracuse was a bit of a drive but it had all the nice stores and she
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wanted to get their daughter a new dress for christmas gave me a kiss on the cheek and then
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she left left in her red chrysler minivan the mall was 60 miles away through winding back country
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roads. Not an easy drive, especially in winter. It gets dark kind of early and Jen does not drive
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in the dark and stuff. And she was supposed to be home like around 435 o'clock-ish anyways.
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When do you start to get a little worried? Right around that time once it started getting dark.
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Remy had been texting Jen all day with no response. He checked in with her best friend,
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Eileen Sales. Well, he actually called me that night. She didn't come home and asked if I had
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heard from her. And I said no. What are the scenarios playing out in your head? Car accident
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was the big one. I really thought some type of car accident. That's when Remy made that call to 911.
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Have you attempted the cell phone? Oh yes, that's how I've been trying to call her. I've called her
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numerous times and texted her and no response. I told him the reason I'm worried is I haven't
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heard from her since about 11 when she left, which is highly unusual. Well, I think it would
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be normal for most people to be to start to be concerned after nine hours. Detective Richard Cobb
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worked for the Shenango County Sheriff's Office. This was just a trip to the mall. She should have
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been home by then. Yeah, she should have been home. Officers started looking up accident reports,
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checking hospitals. Had there been a crash or maybe her vehicle broke down, you know, and some other
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police agency had stopped to assist her and, you know, like she was on her way back. But that wasn't
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the case in this one. Are you able to sleep at all? Oh no, I was up all night. The next morning, the kids woke up with questions.
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What are you told? You know, she went shopping or she's not back yet. My reaction wasn too severe because she my mom Nothing gonna happen to her Mom will probably be home by the time you guys come home from school She probably still have shopping and stuff Did you believe that
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That's what's my hope. But did you believe it? I didn't know what to believe. I was concerned. I needed to know what happened.
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Remy also called his best friend, Jason Wicks. After he told me about Jen missing, I was talking with some of the guys at work.
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A couple people asked me if they'd tried to find my iPhone app. So I called him.
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Remy, did you try this? He hadn't. So after driving the kids to school, Remy headed straight to the police department.
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While talking with the police chief, Remy tried the find my iPhone app. And lo and behold, it connected to her iPhone.
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You figured out where her iPhone was? Yeah, right there at the police station with him.
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And it looked like the phone was moving. and I was freaking out. The spot was almost 20 miles outside of town.
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It did show a location of Jennifer's phone on 23 at the intersection of Boone Hill Road
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and in town of Plymouth. Officers headed there, looked around, didn't find anything.
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So Remy decided to go look for himself. He got out of the car and opened the app.
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I'm hitting the play sound, play sound. And it's a high, shrieking, loud sound. And I walked the bank, and I didn't hear anything yet.
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And then I crossed the street, and I started hearing it, and I looked. And then I saw it. I immediately called 911.
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I found my wife's iPhone. It was the first big clue in the mystery of what happened to Jen Ramsaran.
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And it launched a saga that would consume this small town for longer than anyone imagined.
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You've got a love triangle, you've got DNA, you've got some blood evidence. That's twisted.
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Very twisted. That's a mysterious element to this. It is a mysterious element. There's no words for it.
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I've never seen anything like it. Jen Ramsaran had apparently gone out shopping and didn't return.
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The only clue in her disappearance was her phone, ditched off the side of the road.
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Her husband, Remy, was the one who found it. I found my wife's iPhone. I'm on Moon Hill Road in South Plymouth.
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I haven't touched it. I can see it from here. Can you send someone out here? Where exactly was it found?
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I was kind of right over in that area. It's a little more weedy now than it was then,
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but it was amongst some weeds, some shorter weeds and some rocks. You must have felt like we have a key piece of evidence pretty quickly in this disappearance.
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You know, obviously it was key evidence. It was the first real physical clue that we had in the investigation.
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Remy called Jen's best friend Eileen with the news. He said, I found her phone and I said, oh my God, I couldn't believe it. My heart sunk.
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Did you think something sinister had happened? Absolutely. But to investigators, a ditched cell phone could mean anything.
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This was, for all intents and purposes, an adult woman who may have just left her life on a whim.
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Police treated it as a missing persons case, checked hospitals and searched roadside accident reports,
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but didn't immediately launch any large-scale physical searches. Jen's father went looking himself, driving around anywhere he could think of,
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up and down country roads looking for a sign of his daughter or her van. She'd been missing five days when he saw something.
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It was Jen's red van. It had been abandoned here in this apartment complex eight miles from her house.
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That must have been just an awful, awful discovery for her father. I'm sure it was.
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Investigators arrived on the scene. The van was empty, but inside they found spots of blood.
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Now that the van has been found and it's clear that something bad has happened to Jen,
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are all your worst fears being realized? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Devastated.
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Absolutely devastated. Shocked. I was scared to death. It was the big news. I mean, this is such a small town.
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Pat Newell is a local newspaper reporter and friend of the family. The story hit home for him and a lot of people around town.
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You know, a woman with three children has gone missing right around Christmas. So it was right at the heart of the most, probably the most joyous time of the year.
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And this is what the police are dealing with. Jen and Remy Ramsaran lived a quiet life here in the backwoods of upstate New York.
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Their town, New Berlin, is so small it barely registered a thousand people in the last census.
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It's the stereotypical small town living. We had a great house. It was a lot of fun, family gatherings.
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This is a great place to raise a family. Absolutely. We found a beautiful home right next to Shenango Lake.
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Remy and Jen had been married 13 years. They were college sweethearts. What was it that you fell for the most about her?
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Her personality. It was special. She was so friendly. And you felt instantly comfortable with her.
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Jen and Eileen met through their daughters in Girl Scouts and the two families had become close
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we would say good morning to each other on text she'd either say it or I would say it first
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it so nice when you can find someone like that it is I mean she was always there for me Always No matter what I needed To Eileen and everyone who knew the couple
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Jen was Remy's opposite. She was sweet and quiet. He was loud and boisterous. There's so many people that would walk up to my wife
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and go, I'm so sorry. How do you put up with him? Has anyone ever described you as quirky or odd or goofball?
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Absolutely. Including Jen. and probably anyone that's ever met me. Remy is a real force.
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Yes, we knew when he walked in the room. At some points you're like, oh, here comes Remy, you know.
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Yeah, he's loud. Their opposites attract relationships somehow just worked. Jen's friend Teresa Leiser says Jen seemed happy and busy
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being a stay-at-home mom to her three kids. That's pretty much the biggest thing that she talked about was her kids.
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Jen was a Sunday school teacher. Yes. Knitting instructor. Yes. She was also very good at cooking.
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Very Martha Stewart. Yes. Remy was focused on climbing the corporate ladder, first at Charles Schwab and later at American Express and IBM.
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He was also into running marathons, lots of them. 26 marathons, and I was sponsored.
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In one year? Yeah. 26 marathons. Yes, ma'am. You would go with him as a family when he would run the marathons?
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Yeah, most of the time. I ran a 5K and then a 10K the day after that when I was, I want to say around 11.
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I think I was 11. It was the youngest person there doing the 10K. Remy also got his wife's friend Eileen into marathons.
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We started working out and then he had mentioned running. But as Remy spent more time training for marathons, Jen immersed herself in a competition of her own.
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She started playing an online game called Kingdoms of Camelot, where players from all over the world take on medieval roles and team up to wage battles together.
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She would show me pictures of her castle and her kingdom that she was building on the phone.
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Do you remember your mom playing the game Kingdoms of Camelot? I'd see her on her laptop a lot, but I don't know what she was playing.
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I know she spent a significant amount of time on her laptop. The game had Jen in touch with strangers from all over the internet, and now Jen was gone.
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The first thing I thought was these people in the game. Which could be a recipe for disaster.
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Right. And that's what I thought in my heart. But it was more than just a theory.
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Eileen knew a secret, the kind only a best friend would know. While Remy Ramsaran spent much of 2012 running marathons,
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his wife Jen was immersed in the fantasy world of Kingdoms of Camelot. In the online game, Jen, the mom of three, was transformed into a lady among lords.
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She just wanted to be on her game. And I would joke around about, Jen, you know, come back to the real world, you know,
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pull yourself out of that game. She was definitely sucked into it. She was checking out a little bit.
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Very much so. It started turning into addiction. And she was on it quite a lot, close to eight hours a day, maybe more,
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even in the evenings. Did you feel like you were losing your mom a little bit because she was on the computer so much.
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She stopped coming to the living room to watch, you know, the family shows. She became more and more withdrawn.
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She wasn't cooking. You know, they were ordering out every night. You know, I did their laundry one night because it was just so stacked up.
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The kids didn't have anything. And I said, you want me to do your laundry? She's like, sure.
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While on a recent shopping trip together, Eileen says all Jen could talk about was her game and the new friends she was making online.
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There was one player in particular, a British man named Rob. And she would joke around about, you know, things they would talk about, you know, because in England it's different than it is here, so different.
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And I think she liked that. Eileen says Jen confessed that the online friendship had turned flirtatious.
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She even knew what kind of cologne he wore. We swung in to the mall and she wanted to smell his cologne.
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And we did. We smelled his cologne. Had her appearance started to change? A little bit.
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But it wasn't an everyday thing. It was just randomly. One day I would stop by and she had makeup on.
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She said she was taking pictures of herself. And she would dial herself up, take pictures.
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And I thought, you know, that's fine. But on the other hand, it was kind of strange.
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Rob knew where she lived and was thinking about relocating, coming up here. And he's in England.
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Yeah. I said, what if he does come up here? And she kind of giggled. Now, with Jen missing, Eileen felt she had no choice but to tell the police.
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Did you think that perhaps this man, this quasi-stranger, had come all the way to New York and just wanted to meet her that badly?
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You know, I didn't know. I didn't know if he was really from England. What if he was closer?
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You know, people lie online all the time. Did you feel the need to get in touch with this Rob immediately?
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We worked to do that almost from the start. We sent them messages through the gaming app.
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You know, this is the Shenangue County Sheriff's Office. Jennifer's been reported missing.
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We're wondering if you had any contact with her. Turns out Rob was in the U.K. Interpol arranged a meeting between him and the British police Rob admitted he was married and used the word intimate to describe his relationship with Jen Well Jennifer had sent some sort of lingerie and he had sent her I believe it was that she never picked up
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Did he express what that money was for? I believe it was for her to buy herself a gift. You know, this is early December. It's close to Christmas time.
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Rob and Jen had talked about meeting in person, but he insisted he hadn't been anywhere near New York when she disappeared.
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In fact, he said he'd been worried too, wondering why Jen hadn't been online for days.
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As the detective worked to check out his story, Eileen broke the news to Remy about his wife's online romance.
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When I told him, he was furious. You know, he's, what? You know, she was, I said, you know,
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this man online knows where she lives. An emotional Remy spoke to Jen directly on the local news.
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I don't think you ever, ever knew how much we care for you and how much you're loved.
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Remy says that despite the blood evidence, he clung to hope that Jen was still alive.
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He posted frequent updates on Facebook. He was alone with three kids, and I thought he was grasping at anything that he could get
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to feel like maybe his wife was out there still. Are you asking your dad, where's mom?
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What's happening? He always told us, we'll find her. And we did, I mean, various things like, you know, awareness.
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I remember one time we were lighting a bunch of lanterns and it got on the news.
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There's no doubt in my mind, I've said it before, there's no doubt in my mind that we're not going to see her again.
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There's no doubt in my mind. Winter snow was blanketing the town. And underneath it all, another secret.
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Some people are going to remember you as being the worst kind of friend to Jen. You know, you can't take back what you've done.
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Jen Ramsaran had been flirting with a guy she met playing an online game. She confessed to her friend that she'd even sent him lingerie in the mail.
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The lingerie. That really bothered me that she had sent that. I thought that was serious.
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Remy felt betrayed, but he didn't get much sympathy from his best friend Jason. That's because Jason knew that Remy also had a secret.
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Why are you so mad at the possibility that she was having an affair? And I was like, Remy, I mean, you've been having an affair yourself.
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That's right. Mad as he was about Jen's online romance, Remy had been cheating on her.
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And with the last person on earth she would ever expect. In my heart and in my stomach, I knew it was wrong.
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This is your wife's best friend, the Girl Scout troop leader. Oh, yes. Very bad thing.
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The affair between Remy and Eileen began nearly a year before Jen disappeared. They'd been spending lots of time together training for marathons.
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That's when Remy had an epiphany while running in the Arizona heat. And it was one of the first marathons I wanted to try and run without drinking a drop of water.
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I eventually got that done. Challenged myself. There was like streaks of salt on my back, and I started cramping up and hurting, but I didn't give up. I'm still going.
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And a song came on by the Christian rock band Skillet, Tomorrow's One Day Too Late.
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And as I'm running, my mind just drifted, and that song hit home, and I love that song.
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and the person that came to my mind was Eileen. It's this man in the middle of a desert
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running without water who realizes that you're the real love of his life. I didn't know that.
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A few weeks later, Remy told Eileen he was falling for her. I asked her if I could kiss her and I did
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and we both felt extremely guilty. And did you kiss him back? I did. And then I left, just like that.
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Sat in my car for a minute, thinking, what did I just do? Some people would have been...
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Shocked. Shocked and said, what are you doing? Jen's my best friend. Why are you doing this?
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Right. What was your gut telling you? My gut was telling me, no, you can't do this.
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It's wrong. It's so wrong. Still, not long after that first kiss, they took the relationship to the next level.
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Did you feel any guilt consummating this relationship in the house that you share with your wife?
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I know I should say yes, but I didn't. Jen and I had already grown apart. Did you talk to Jen about getting a divorce?
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Yes. Oh, yes. A handful of different times. For Eileen, at least, it was more than just physical.
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Even though she was married with kids herself, she was falling in love with Remy.
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And to feel that someone cared like he did. Everyone wants to feel that importance.
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What was it about him that you were so attracted to? His personality was huge. I mean, always lifted you up.
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Always made you feel important. I felt invincible. Eileen says Remy's confidence was intoxicating.
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So was his good job. And generosity. So also during this time, he's buying you clothes
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with Some rules attached? I could not wear them around Pat. Your husband? Right. He was not allowed to see me, and there were a lot of running clothes, you know.
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I was not allowed to wear them in front of him. Did you abide by those rules? Yes, I did.
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Why? How did he have this power over you? I don't know. I really honestly... Unfortunately, one of my bad characters is I'm a very weak, weak person.
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Eileen says they would get together whenever they could slip away from their jobs and kids.
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That's a lot of sneaking around. Yeah, I couldn't take it. I couldn't. It was too much. It got to be too much.
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Did he say to you, I'm going to divorce Jen? He said it, yeah. Did that make you happy?
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No. No, because I knew it would hurt her. During the affair, Eileen separated from her husband and moved out,
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though he was in the dark about why. Then, a few weeks before Jen went missing, Eileen broke it off with Remy and moved back home.
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But she and Remy weren't completely done. In fact, they were together the day before Jen went missing.
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We did have sex. I did not want to further the relationship at that point. How did he handle that?
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You know, he gets upset. You know, he wants what he wants. An affair with the best friend? What would investigators think?
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That's kind of a bombshell. It's a big bombshell, yes. Eileen's affair with Remy had lasted for nearly a year,
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something she'd been hiding from her husband Pat and her best friend Jen. But after Jen went missing, Eileen knew she had to come clean to the police.
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I needed to help Jen. I needed them to find her, and I would do anything to help them at that moment.
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How did they react to you when you told them that you were having an affair with your best friend's husband and your best friend is missing?
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You know, they really weren't, they didn't really show me much. You know, they just took what I said, wrote it down, and that was it.
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You must have been so nervous, though, because this is the first time you're openly talking about this affair to someone other than Remy.
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Yeah, and I was nervous that, you know, Pat's going to find out at this point, and here comes my world, and now my family's going to know that I deceived them, too.
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But she wasn't alone at the police station. Remy was there, too, right by her side.
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Though he initially lied and told investigators his marriage was fine, he quickly fessed up.
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I don't have anything in my life to feel embarrassed about except that. You know, yes, Eileen and I fell in love, but I don't have any deep, dark secrets.
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That one's pretty deep. It is what it is. But besides that, there is no... I don't drink.
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I don't... I'm not a wife beater. I'm not a kid beater. I'm nothing. People have affairs.
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It is what it is. But your wife's best friend and she's gone missing. That's a bombshell.
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I don't see how that's a bombshell because I volunteered every and all information, whatever was asked.
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Word does get around. I don't think his affair was as secret as he thought it was.
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Is this the classic have to look at the spouse? I wouldn't say in this case this was the classic look at the spouse.
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Certainly he was a suspect at that point. So were others. It was as much to rule him out as it was to rule him in at that point.
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We needed to clarify a couple of things, you know, one about his whereabouts and what he was doing on the morning of December 11th.
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Remy went over the details of that morning with investigators. Dropped the kids off, came back home between 8.05, 8.15, and I had already logged on to work.
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There was still some stuff with the projects I was working with other colleagues on that still needed to be done.
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so little odds and ends. So I had both laptops on. Remy said Jen left to go shopping around 10.30,
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and after that, he went for a run, ending up at the local YMCA. He told police his exact route through town.
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As Detective Cobb set out to corroborate Remy's alibi, he was still looking into Jennifer's friend Rob
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from the computer game, the Brit she'd been flirting with. Anybody was a suspect in the beginning of the investigation.
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Rob and anybody else that she may have had contact with. The detective asked U.S. Immigration to run a check on Rob's passport.
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The agency reported back Rob had not entered the United States in 2012. So Rob from the fantasy game was cleared as a potential suspect.
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Still, Remy insisted Jen had run off with someone. I've told that to the police many times. Many times.
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And do you think it was a direct link to these online games? Absolutely. Do you think she was having an affair?
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I can almost guarantee it. In fact, that's what I believed happened on December 11th.
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She went to go meet someone. Even if she had not met up with Rob from the UK, Eileen still wondered who else Jen had been talking to.
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All you knew was that Rob was the only one she told you about. Right. She's not telling you about any of the other guys.
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Mm-hmm. In the lingerie. I thought, well, did she do that to someone else? You know.
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While Eileen was wondering about that, investigators were wondering about her. Why was Eileen a possible suspect?
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Just because of her relationship her involvement with Jennifer and Mr Ramstran Generally you would think a husband or a male might commit murder but women can also Police asked Dylene to take a polygraph test The results were inconclusive
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And they spun it around on me, you know, say I was lying. And I wasn't. And I was truthful from the beginning.
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And all I wanted to do was help. If you're being open about the affair, what did they think you were lying about?
00:30:18
You know, they would ask questions. You know, where were you on such and such a day?
00:30:23
I was working. You know, yeah, I met up with him. Police investigated the case as a potential homicide,
00:30:30
even though Jen was still officially a missing person. Now you've got the van, you've got the phone, but you still have no body.
00:30:36
Right. Is that frustrating? It was very frustrating to not be able to find her. That was about to change, along with another discovery.
00:30:46
What was and wasn't on these security cameras. The disappearance of Jen Ramsaran had officially been a missing person case for two and a half months.
00:31:10
February 26, 2013, that all changed. 11 o'clock at night, I get a phone call and the police tell me they're downstairs.
00:31:21
I went downstairs, I unlocked the door, and that's when I was told that a body was found.
00:31:28
Is it my wife? Are you sure? That was heart-wrenching. Heart-wrenching. How did you tell the children?
00:31:38
I called all three kids into the master bedroom, and I told the kids, Mommy's in heaven, but she's always going to be with us.
00:31:47
that's probably the most difficult thing i've ever had to do and we all cried for a while
00:31:56
wow this is so devastating you grow up fast um but also somewhat emotionally stunted i guess
00:32:05
you don't know what to do no how to behave jen's body had been discovered on an embankment about
00:32:12
20 miles from her house. The snow had started to melt and settle enough that part of her became exposed.
00:32:19
She had no clothes on? Right, she was found naked. I sent people out here and the scene was secured
00:32:24
until we were able to get the forensic people here to process it. It was awful. The grief.
00:32:32
And I knew at this point there's no telling her I'm sorry. What really frustrates me,
00:32:40
Jan's body was found just a little over three miles away from where that phone was.
00:32:46
You feel the police should have looked harder? Absolutely. Even a helicopter, something.
00:32:52
On the day Jen's body was found, Remy called the local news media back to his house.
00:32:57
I'd be strong for the kids. Make sure they're okay. Just like I've been, and we'll figure it out.
00:33:03
Despite Remy's tears, one by one, folks around town began to turn against not just him, but Eileen, too.
00:33:11
They soon realized they hadn't kept their secret very well. Were you wearing a scarlet ladder?
00:33:16
Absolutely. They were saying I was involved somehow, you know, and that crushed me.
00:33:23
You know, and I couldn't stand up for myself. You know, there's nothing I can say to make anyone believe me.
00:33:29
And why would they? I felt awful. Um, so it pushed me towards him. Did you start to talk about being together permanently?
00:33:40
I would go over, make sure everyone was okay if they needed anything, you know. Didn't plan on moving in.
00:33:49
Did he want you to? He did. Why weren't you? No, it's not necessary. You know, the kids are going through so much.
00:33:58
You need to focus on the children. Back then, Glenn didn't think there was anything strange about his mom's best friend being around their house.
00:34:07
I saw her frequently. Like some days after school, she would just be there with her kids.
00:34:13
I was more than happy to play with her daughters. Could you tell if anything was going on with your dad and Eileen at that time?
00:34:20
I kind of assumed, but there was no inherent proof that I had witnessed. How did that make you feel, assuming that, that they were together?
00:34:32
I hadn't harbored any hate for it. It wasn't anything like it was, it didn't make me upset, but I didn't feel good.
00:34:41
Like, my mom will always be my mom, and I love her. Glenn says his dad tried to protect him and his sisters from all the attention the investigation created.
00:34:51
I knew that he was experiencing some major sadness. He was trying to keep things as normal as possible, would you say?
00:35:00
Yeah, he was trying to make sure we were all happy and as well off as we could be.
00:35:07
At home, he may have been shielding his kids, but online, Remy was outspoken. He started saying things about Jen, like, you know, well, she wasn't really a mother for the past six months.
00:35:20
She was, she had disconnected herself from the family. He seems like a total oversharer.
00:35:27
Yes, yes, overshared everything. He was using social media and news media to kind of get his message out.
00:35:35
What message was he trying to get out in the media? That Jennifer changed and that she wasn't, you know, the mother or wife or housekeeper or cook that she used to be.
00:35:43
Trying to deflect off of himself? Is that what you believed? Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, and put this on Jennifer.
00:35:50
For investigators the key to ruling Remy out or in meant corroborating his timeline from that day he told the detectives he saw Jen leave to go shopping around 1030 a We start looking through her cell phone information We found out that her cell phone
00:36:05
last connected to the home Wi-Fi network at 1057 a.m. on December 11th. This is a red flag for you
00:36:12
that her her phone is clearly at home when she's not supposed to be. Right. It's hard for him to
00:36:18
explain. What else was starting to bother you? Well, we were starting to collect different
00:36:23
surveillance videos from various convenience stores, banks, anywhere along the route that
00:36:30
Mr. Ramstram claimed he ran from the residence to the YMCA. Turns out Remy wasn't on any of them.
00:36:38
But he was on tape here, stretching, before entering the Y at 1242 p.m. So his alibi of running this certain route appears to be false.
00:36:50
So we have all these things that are now taking the focus off. This could be anybody and putting it really on Mr. Ramster.
00:37:00
Investigators now believed Remy lied about what he was doing the morning Jen disappeared.
00:37:05
As for Eileen, the detective was able to verify her alibi for the time Jen disappeared.
00:37:10
She was at work that morning, but not that afternoon. Both she and Remy told investigators this.
00:37:16
After his run, Eileen picked Remy up from the Y and dropped him off at home. We still had the question, though, that Eileen picked Mr. Ramstern up from the YMCA shortly after 1 o'clock that afternoon.
00:37:29
He wondered if she wasn't involved in the actual murder, maybe she was somehow involved in the cover-up.
00:37:35
Did you still think that maybe she knew all along what had happened? That was still a possibility that she had some kind of guilty knowledge.
00:37:43
They thought I wasn't giving them everything in which I was. You know, if I had more, I would have given it.
00:37:48
I would have given anything to help. Eileen says it was clear investigators were trying to build a murder case against Remy.
00:37:55
And I just said, no, you know, I'm not believing that. Remy could be controlling.
00:38:01
Yeah. But just in your eyes, not controlling enough where he would take his own wife's life.
00:38:06
No, that never even crossed my mind. But it certainly crossed investigators' minds,
00:38:13
especially when they found a bloodstain on Remy's sweatshirt. The one he was wearing the day Jen disappeared.
00:38:19
Then, three months after Jen's body was found, more forensics came in with the autopsy report.
00:38:25
What was the medical examiner able to tell you? Well, he was able to rule out any natural cause for her death, any toxicological cause for her death.
00:38:34
He ruled out suicide, and he didn't find any accidental cause. So, I mean, essentially, you're left with homicide.
00:38:41
What would that leave? Strangulation? If there's no visible marks on the body? A strangulation or suffocation would be possibilities, yes.
00:38:49
I get a phone call. Can you come on down? We have those medical results. We'll finally get to talk to him and tell you exactly what happened.
00:39:00
Well, we wanted one more shot at interviewing Mr. Ramstrand. This time, investigators didn't hold back.
00:39:08
I told you I always have. May 17, 2013, six months after Jen Ramsaran had gone missing,
00:39:31
her husband Remy was back talking with detectives. And it wasn't friendly. What's the truth?
00:39:37
What do you have in there? I have the truth. The truth is you killed Jen. Bullshit.
00:39:41
You had something. I never. You did. Your alibi is bull****. And clearly, I don't know why you think you're on camera running past these places.
00:39:51
You're not. I don't know why you cannot get that in your head, Remy. The camera doesn't lie.
00:39:57
The person does. And you're the one lying about it. I like to leave. You're not leaving.
00:40:02
I've already told you that. Sit down. You're not leaving. You're under arrest. Booked that same day?
00:40:08
Oh, yeah. Not just booked. perp walk from a block away straight through in chains and manacles and leg irons, the whole ball
00:40:18
of wax. I get pulled into the elementary office and my grandparents are there to pick us up.
00:40:25
And I mean, how do they even, do they tell you exactly what's happened? I don't even remember
00:40:31
how they explained it to me. I just know they probably did. There's just, you know, skips in
00:40:38
time that I don't have any particular memory of. Eileen saw it on the news. You want to believe
00:40:45
that Remy is incapable of this. Absolutely. A man you loved or loved. Absolutely. By the time
00:40:53
they arrested Remy, investigators were convinced Eileen had been telling the truth. There was no
00:40:58
evidence that she had any involvement in Jennifer's homicide. But from behind bars on a recorded jail
00:41:05
line, Remy was calling her. A lot. Oh, my girl. That's what, you know, I close my eyes
00:41:14
and I imagine what you're wearing and stuff, you know? I miss you. Terribly. I miss you.
00:41:22
What does he want to talk about? He wanted to know what I was doing. Trying to talk me to move into the house.
00:41:28
Still, at this point. Do me one favor, right? When you get back and press him, are you really
00:41:33
honestly going to move in finally? Yeah, probably. And I would almost agree. Yes, yes, you know.
00:41:41
Just so the phone calls would stop a little bit. And you know, it's strange. I felt guilty that he was in jail.
00:41:46
Because part of me thought, there's no way. There's no way he hurt her. When did you start to have doubts
00:41:54
that what you had believed all along maybe wasn really what happened That maybe Remy was somehow involved His dad called me and said they found blood on his sweatshirt
00:42:06
And I thought, okay, but I'm thinking back, I'm thinking to their house and how messy the house was.
00:42:12
And, you know, I'm thinking maybe it's old blood. Just little things were starting to play in my head.
00:42:20
And it scared me. Were you starting to live in Rewind? Mm-hmm. Going back over every moment, every word.
00:42:28
Eileen slowly cut off all contact with Remy as his case went to trial. The case will be about the murder of Jennifer Ramsoran.
00:42:36
Remy's trial began in September 2014. Joseph McBride was the Shenango County District Attorney.
00:42:43
Do you think the motive was crystal clear? I think that the defendant was obsessed with his girlfriend Eileen Sales.
00:42:51
He was constantly asking Ms. Sales to leave her husband so that they could be together.
00:42:58
So on December 11th rolled around, it was time for him to get rid of his wife. The DA played some of those many jail calls between Remy and Eileen.
00:43:08
You know, I look at my ring finger every day and I just imagine your name right on there.
00:43:14
You're a gift from God. You were meant for me. And I know it was meant for you, right?
00:43:18
Yeah. He called you around 2,000 times in jail? Yeah, I had no idea it was that much.
00:43:25
Remy's friend Jason testified for the prosecution. He told the jury Remy planned to divorce Jen and keep custody of the kids.
00:43:33
I mentioned that Jen would end up getting the kids, and he was very confident that he would be the one that had the kids.
00:43:39
I kept telling him, I was like, I don't think that's exactly how it's going to play out.
00:43:44
Jennifer was going to get custody. And why is that important? that gives him another reason, another motive to kill his wife.
00:43:51
Eileen was the centerpiece of the prosecutor's case. He called her to the stand where she faced Remy in court.
00:43:57
How difficult was it for you to testify? It was very hard. You know, who wants to talk about their sex life in front of so many people
00:44:07
and for it to be written in the papers for your kids to read? She testified about the day Jen disappeared,
00:44:14
how Remy called her and asked for a ride home from the gym, then said goodbye outside of his house.
00:44:20
He got out. He said, I know you're busy. And, um, never invited me in. Nothing. Eileen told the jury she was trying to break up with Remy,
00:44:31
but the two had been intimate the day before. And now it seemed odd that he didn't try again that afternoon.
00:44:38
And that's one of the things that, looking back, why didn't he invite me in? The defendant was always interested in sexual relations when he was alone with his girlfriend.
00:44:48
That afternoon, the defendant didn't ask her to come into the house to be alone so they could be together.
00:44:54
Because ladies and gentlemen, he wasn't interested in relations that day because he had other things on his mind.
00:45:00
He had just killed his wife and he had to think about what he had to do next to try and not get caught.
00:45:06
The prosecutor told the jury Remy had been lying to the police all along. Remy said he was working on his computer that morning,
00:45:13
but a forensic expert testified that couldn't be true. In examining the computers, the expert said that there was no work done during those hours.
00:45:22
Once again, the defendant's story doesn't match the evidence. In our theory of the case, the defendant had killed his wife, probably in the bedroom,
00:45:31
and he was using that time to plan his cover-up and to make sure that he got rid of the evidence against him.
00:45:38
and that at 11.30 or 11.15 approximately, the defendant left the scene with the body of his wife in the van.
00:45:49
And then he drove the van out to where he dumped the body. Then he dumped the phone at Moon Hill Road.
00:45:56
Police testified that when they examined the phone, it was in perfect condition.
00:46:01
There wasn't any damage. So to us, that said that somebody had actually come down here and placed the phone.
00:46:06
McBride said that after planting the phone and dumping the van at the apartment complex,
00:46:12
Remy the runner jogged a short mile to the YMCA. Where he was shown on the videotape for the first time,
00:46:18
walking into the Y, stretching his arms, acting as if nothing was wrong. And the DA reminded the jurors that it was Remy who found the phone the next day.
00:46:27
I found my wife's iPhone. I found it. Come on down. I'm going to wait for you. Found it because he put it there.
00:46:34
McBride called a former person of interest to testify, Rob from England. Over Skype, he told the jury he became alarmed that morning when, like a ghost,
00:46:45
Jen disappeared in the middle of their Kingdoms of Camelot game. She left the game and had never been here from since.
00:46:52
Fifteen minutes later, the gentleman from London sent her a text message, where did you go? That message was never replied to.
00:46:59
Why is that important? Because she never, ever left the game before. She never, ever left without an explanation.
00:47:07
The DA believed that was a key moment that tied his theory together. Remy caught her playing the game in bed and snapped, killing her right there in the bedroom.
00:47:16
Investigators even found a spot of blood on the mattress. And there was that blood stain on the sweatshirt Remy wore that day.
00:47:23
And the DNA on that blood spot was also partially Remy's and it was partially Jennifer's.
00:47:29
And that was powerful. but Remy was about to make his case right to the jury what would they make of his story?
00:47:37
I had the perfect life I had a wife I had a girlfriend I had kids I had everything anyone would want
00:47:58
music Is there no doubt in your mind that you will walk out of here a free man? I'm scared of my death that they're going to send me to jail or prison.
00:48:06
But here's the thing. I have truth on my side. I did nothing wrong. I did nothing.
00:48:11
I would never harm my wife. As Remy Ramsaran faced life in prison for the murder of his wife, Jen,
00:48:17
his parents hired attorney Gilberto Garcia to defend him. I liked him very much.
00:48:23
He was extremely respectful, was very open with me, and was very happy that I was there.
00:48:29
When he came to visit me on the 26th of December of 2013, it was finally the light at the end of a tunnel.
00:48:37
In his opening statement, Garcia told the jury the police botched the case from the start.
00:48:42
The police did a very shoddy job here. And why? Because they concentrated on Mr. Ransoran from day one as the suspect.
00:48:52
Yes, Mrs. Ransoran died. We don't know how she died. We don't know when she died.
00:48:59
But he did not do it. Remy's lawyer challenged the state's timeline of what happened that morning,
00:49:06
highlighting when Remy left the house to go on his run. Mr. McBride said in his opening that he left at 1130.
00:49:14
If he left at 1130, I have the easiest case in the world, because it is impossible, time-wise, to have done that trip in an hour and 12 minutes.
00:49:24
drop a body, get out and place a phone, come back and then walk to the YMCA. Just can't do it.
00:49:33
As for the security cameras that had not captured Remy that day, Garcia said the tapes were worthless.
00:49:39
One video was missing a timestamp. Another had a partially obstructed view. And I argued to the jury, you can't see this person walking
00:49:48
because there's still another 75 feet further that the camera doesn't see. But the defense was centered on Remy himself.
00:49:57
Remy spent two full days on the stand. Video cameras were not allowed to record witness testimony, including his.
00:50:04
Do you have a strategy? What strategy? Tell the truth. There is no strategy. Remy told the jury his wife had changed in the months before she disappeared
00:50:12
and that the two had discussed divorcing. But he was adamant that he had not killed her.
00:50:18
Eileen felt uncomfortable sitting in the gallery as Remy testified. so she listened from just outside of the courtroom.
00:50:25
I knew he was lying. You know, I could tell. Some of the things he was saying, I needed to hear.
00:50:32
I needed to hear how he was talking, how it was sounding coming out of his mouth.
00:50:38
The DA says Remy was a difficult witness to cross-examine. The questioning turned to yelling at some points.
00:50:45
You weren't getting frustrated. I was frustrated. I would ask him what day it was,
00:50:48
and he would tell me how much he loved his wife. He was failing to follow the rules, and I was doing everything in my control to try and make him to comply and do what he was supposed to do.
00:50:57
And when I was doing that, I did raise my voice. Garcia says letting Remy be Remy was part of the plan.
00:51:04
I let the prosecution yell at him because I wanted the jury to see his human reactions so that they could judge him on that aspect and say, perhaps he said this wrong, but he's honest.
00:51:19
Reporter Pat Newell was in the courtroom. I just don't think he could help himself.
00:51:24
He just, that's just how he is. Honestly, I'm really surprised he testified. I can't understand why he did.
00:51:30
It only hurt himself. Remy was the defense's only witness. In his closing arguments,
00:51:37
Garcia addressed Remy's tendency to talk too much. Mr. Ramstrom testified. Oh my goodness, if I would have had a pan,
00:51:45
I would have hit him in the head with it. I was so frustrated. because, you know, he's not the flow witness
00:51:55
that every lawyer dreams of. He was eager to tell more than he had to by the questions.
00:52:04
I understood him. You can judge him. And he also acknowledged that he himself had wondered
00:52:12
about Remy's guilt or innocence. Is it possible that he could have done it? I've asked myself that question a million times.
00:52:21
Is it possible Remy could have done it? That's not enough. Suspicion is not enough.
00:52:29
What I'm trying to say to the jury at that point is, I've judged them. I've asked myself a million times,
00:52:37
could he have done this? And the reason why I ask myself is because I could not come to a conclusion.
00:52:44
How do you want people to see you? Who are you? I am weird. I am who I am. I'm never concerned.
00:52:51
I always used to tell the kids. Who is that? I always tell the kids, specifically the kids,
00:52:55
don't worry about what people think you are or who you think they are. The only people that you should be concerned about are the people that love you,
00:53:03
the family, your true closest friends, everyone else. Forget about it. Anyone that knows me, I'm a great father.
00:53:10
I was also a really good husband. Yes, I cheated on my wife. However, I was a great father.
00:53:16
It is a circumstantial case. Holy circumstantial. Do you worry about motive and how the jury will feel about motive, the affair?
00:53:27
People have affairs all the time and they wind up killing their wives. It is what it is.
00:53:33
I don't know what it is. I didn't do anything. Here's the thing. If I had done anything to my wife, would I have gone out and tried to find her phone?
00:53:42
Would I try and help and answer every question to the police? I should have lawyered up right off the bat.
00:53:47
You have to remember, my life was absolutely fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. You were living though with a secret Okay That isn always fantastic No no Here the thing though It might be a secret but in regards to Jen and I splitting apart and whatever happened it was always there
00:54:09
I mean, it's not like a bad thing. You had a plan. Absolutely. Did you have a plan to kill your wife?
00:54:14
Of course not. Is this all about Remy? Remy wanted to have the life he wanted. Whoa, that's where you're absolutely wrong. I had the perfect life.
00:54:25
I had a wife, I had a girlfriend, I had kids. I had everything anyone would want.
00:54:31
The worst thing to have ever happened to me is Jango missing. Absolutely worst thing.
00:54:36
It was one of the oddest defenses we've heard from a murder suspect. His affair made him too happy to kill.
00:54:43
And yet his lawyer seemed to agree. What could trigger a man to kill his wife? The morning after, he's back with his girlfriend.
00:54:53
Apparently they had sexual relations, so that should have been hormonally good for him.
00:54:59
You heard a lot of stuff about sexual activity. Does that make a man a killer? And is that evidence of intent to kill your wife on a morning after you have been with your girlfriend?
00:55:17
You were happy as a pig in mud? Remy's fate was now in the juror's hands. How would they judge the man who says he doesn't care what anyone thinks?
00:55:40
After three weeks of trial, the jurors got the case against Remy Ramsaran. Did you think he was going to get off?
00:55:47
I was worried. Why were you worried? Because at that point I believed he hurt her.
00:55:57
What do you think happened that day when you run it through your mind? He knew I was back home and he was angry.
00:56:05
And I think Jen had decided that I'm moving on too. And I think he just couldn't handle it.
00:56:16
I just think he just snapped. after just three hours a verdict with respect to count one of the indictment
00:56:27
charging the crime murder in the second degree how do you find a defendant guilty or not guilty
00:56:34
defendant guilty i had so many emotions i can't even tell you it was emotion overload.
00:56:49
Jen's friend, Teresa, was relieved but heartbroken. He took her away from everyone.
00:56:55
She was just the nicest, caring person, I think, that I ever met. She was just, she was nice to everyone.
00:57:04
At the time, Glenn was almost 12 years old. He and his sisters didn't even get the news from a family member.
00:57:10
My siblings and I were seeing a therapist and she told us and we just went back to the same old, same old.
00:57:19
Wow. Just living. So you learned about your dad's guilty verdict from the therapist?
00:57:25
Yeah. The judge sentenced Rummy to 25 years to life. We just knew we wouldn't see my dad for a long time.
00:57:34
Did you feel like in a way both of your parents had died? Yeah, it was, you lose any sense of what a normal house feels like.
00:57:43
Glenn and his sister stayed in New Berlin, living with Jen's parents. My grandparents are on the older side.
00:57:50
They didn't know what to buy me for Christmas. They didn't know what to feed me.
00:57:53
They tried, but, you know, it's rough. And especially being of the older generation, you know,
00:58:02
They're so out of touch with the problems that, you know, I'm going to face. Did your grandparents ever say anything negative about your dad or say, you know, your dad did this and we don't want you to talk to him?
00:58:14
Or did they try to stay out of it? My grandpa never. He just stayed out of it entirely.
00:58:20
My grandma had been very verbal on Facebook prior to it, cursing out my dad. Are you allowed to go see him in prison?
00:58:30
I'm not, no. You're not, so your grandparents are keeping you from him? Yeah, and there wasn't really talk of going to see him.
00:58:39
Did you think, maybe my dad did this? I didn't even entertain ideas. You know, my siblings never talked about it.
00:58:47
We didn't watch Dateline or know about anything in the case. We simply just lived in the world that had happened and didn't bother thinking about it.
00:58:58
But Glenn says that as they got older, they did talk about it more. And once he turned 18, he decided to see his dad in prison.
00:59:07
Did your dad say anything to you like, I didn't do this. You know, I'm wrongfully accused.
00:59:14
Yes, yes, he did. And I mean, I believe him. Glenn says his dad told him his defense attorney, Gilberto Garcia, did a terrible job.
00:59:23
He didn't call a witness to the stand. My dad went on the stand because he realized that his lawyer had no idea what to do
00:59:31
and had no witnesses to call to the stand, so he had no representation. Glenn went on to college studying to become an engineer.
00:59:38
While he continued to believe his dad was innocent, Eileen remained convinced of his guilt.
00:59:44
She was struggling to put her life back together. My girls need their mom back. I know that Jen and Remy's kids, that can't happen.
00:59:54
And I sometimes think to my Why should I be happy Why should I be happy when I can move forward I can move on but her kids don have a mom
01:00:09
Do you wish you would never have met him? Yeah. I do. I feel like, honestly, if I hadn't walked into their lives, even for Girl Scouts, they would still be together.
01:00:25
the guilt, the regret, the heartache. It's overwhelming. And it's hard to not think of every second of every day.
01:00:42
What's your biggest regret in all of this? My affair. What I did to Jen. Absolutely.
01:00:52
And her family. I hurt her family. You know, and you think to yourself, it's over.
01:01:01
But is it? It's never going to be over. It certainly wasn't over for Remy. Outside the prison walls, his dad was using his life savings to help his son.
01:01:12
He hired new defense attorneys who began working on an appeal. As we dug into this, this first trial was, in my opinion, a complete joke.
01:01:22
Follow the evidence. You will see it for yourself. It's insane what's happened. When Remy Ramsaran first sat down with us just before his conviction, he seemed confident.
01:01:46
I have truth on my side. I always have. I did nothing wrong. I did nothing. And he gushed about his attorney, Gilberto Garcia.
01:01:55
My attorney's been ready forever. We've been ready. Been ready. Garcia also seemed confident, despite the challenges they faced.
01:02:04
All these cases are difficult. If someone says by any chance that they're not, they don't know what they're talking about.
01:02:11
But to be quite frank, I was very, very positive. And that rubbed off on him. But this is Remy after his conviction.
01:02:19
He was an idiot. Everybody knows that. Everybody saw that. It's no surprise to hear a convicted killer badmouth his attorney.
01:02:29
But maybe this time, this convict had a point. There's no way this gentleman had enough knowledge to be able to represent somebody on a murder charge.
01:02:40
Melissa Swartz and David Hammond became Remy's appeals attorneys in 2018. They were alarmed by Gilberto Garcia's inexperience.
01:02:49
It was kind of unclear what type of law he practiced, what sorts of cases he handled.
01:02:56
It was kind of all over the place. Garcia didn't have a legal specialty. He mostly handled civil matters, including bankruptcy and divorce.
01:03:04
They learned that he had never tried a single murder case. In fact, he'd only tried one criminal case his entire career, but withdrew before it finished,
01:03:13
telling the judge he wasn't competent enough to defend his client. I think the Ramsarans stumbled upon somebody who was a very good salesman, right?
01:03:24
He looked the part, he dressed the part, he talked the part. And they don't know enough to realize that he actually didn't know anything that he was talking about.
01:03:33
The two attorneys poured over the trial record as well as the case file. That's when they discovered just how unprepared Remy's lawyer had been.
01:03:42
They say it looked like he was learning criminal law as he went along, printing out information from Google.
01:03:47
Is he Googling specific things about this case or he's just Googling general things about forensics?
01:03:54
General things about forensics. General basic concepts, almost like Wikipedia-style articles.
01:04:01
Yeah, there was one on the basics of DNA. This is a defendant's worst nightmare if you have an attorney
01:04:07
who's literally having to Google basic things about murder. Yes, I would hope it's every defendant's worst nightmare.
01:04:17
And when it came to cross-examining witnesses, the new attorneys say Garcia's performance proved even further just how ill-equipped he was to handle Remy's case.
01:04:27
I mean, one of the most amazing things that I thought, I was like, wow, this guy really knows nothing about this case.
01:04:33
He's in week two of a murder trial, and he's asking questions almost like he needs them to provide him with the answer because he doesn't know it.
01:04:43
Cops would come and testify and he'd say, all right, tell me everything you did in this case.
01:04:47
At one point he asked Cobb, why do you think he's guilty? And Cobb's like, well, this, this.
01:04:54
Yeah, let me go on for seven pages. Very basic things you don't do. Is this like somebody watching Law & Order and then thinking they can go and try a murder case?
01:05:03
Or Dateline. It's like somebody who's an avid Dateline fan all of a sudden thinking,
01:05:09
okay, I'm going to handle this four-week-long murder trial. Remy's family paid Garcia more than $100,000.
01:05:16
They say much of it was supposed to be spent on expert witnesses. We were able to prove that at zero point throughout the entire period of time that he represented Remy,
01:05:28
did he ever have a single conversation with a single expert. He didn't call any experts to testify.
01:05:34
And according to Hammond, didn't prepare Remy for the most important moment of his life.
01:05:39
And then he puts Remy on the stand, doesn't have a single conversation with him about the case.
01:05:45
He said, you know, Remy, you're a very spontaneous person. If you are prepped, it's going to come across robotic, not genuine.
01:05:53
We don't want that. We don't want you prepped. Here a guy who loves to talk He got no direction The questions are poorly framed And so on cross it a complete disaster
01:06:05
And then there was Garcia's closing argument. I've asked myself that question a million times.
01:06:11
Is it possible Remy could have done it? Remy's new lawyer said the nearly two-hour summation was confusing and ineffective.
01:06:20
We're going to paint this red, and it will be red at the end. If there is a reasonable hypothesis, let's move on. I'm not going to go there.
01:06:30
This little thing can be a killer. According to Hammond and Swartz, the incompetence added up to an unfair trial.
01:06:40
They presented what they learned about Garcia to the court in what's known as a 440 motion,
01:06:45
hoping to get Remy's conviction reversed. It's very rare that 440 motions are actually granted.
01:06:51
But with this case, as with Remy Ramsaran himself, you can never quite predict what will happen next.
01:07:00
There's no words for it. I've never seen anything like it. Remy Ramsaran waited behind bars for years as his appeal wound its way through the New York courts.
01:07:23
The petition his new attorneys filed in 2019 was a long shot, but they were confident.
01:07:29
We knew we were going to win. It was so obvious. They were right. A judge found that Remy's attorney, Gilberto Garcia, was incompetent and granted Remy a new trial.
01:07:39
Garcia was also censured by the New Jersey Office of Attorney Ethics for misrepresenting his experience to the Ramsaran family.
01:07:46
And while he defended his reputation at a hearing for Remy's appeal, Garcia told Dateline he respects the judge's decision to grant a new trial.
01:07:55
I always had faith it would happen. I mean, there's two different things. There's one not getting a fair trial, but someone could still be guilty and not get a fair trial.
01:08:04
Yeah, I just don't think he did. I don't even think the Eileen thing would have ever caused him to do any sort of harm to my mom.
01:08:15
I think it would have been highly more likely for my mom to have just left the house.
01:08:21
But for any violence to occur is insane. I still don't see how murder would have been a solution to any problem.
01:08:32
There was a new prosecutor on the case, Ben Bergman. On one point, he agreed with the defense.
01:08:38
You're on the other side of Remy Ramsaran as the acting prosecutor here, but did you agree that he should have a new trial based on what you saw?
01:08:48
Yeah, no doubt. I don't think I've ever seen or have heard of the sort of ineffectiveness that occurred in this case.
01:08:58
Still, that didn't mean he believed Remy was innocent. How certain were you that Remy Ramsaran killed his wife?
01:09:05
No doubt in my mind. The new prosecutor got up to speed on all the evidence. He also went looking for more.
01:09:12
We did a lot of analysis on computers, phones, and things like that, and we got some good information.
01:09:19
Turned out that very morning Jen disappeared. She'd left these three voicemails for Rob, her UK gaming friend.
01:09:25
I'll stop now so the voicemail isn't too long and goes through. What was on the voicemails to Rob?
01:09:33
Basic pleasantries. Hi, how are you doing? You know, I got up and brushed my teeth and brushed my hair.
01:09:40
Talked about letting her dog out, but zero mention of, I'm leaving the house to go shopping today.
01:09:48
Zero mention of that. The youngest one lost another tooth at school yesterday. I think it's her seventh or eighth, but five or six teeth in the last less than a week.
01:09:58
In those three messages, you get the clear picture. She had no intention of leaving the house that day.
01:10:04
So you don't believe she was ever going to the carousel mall in Syracuse? No, absolutely not.
01:10:11
Bergman believed that drove a hole right through Remy's story about that day. But the prosecutor faced a new obstacle.
01:10:17
For the retrial, the judge was not going to allow Rob to testify remotely from the UK,
01:10:23
and Rob refused to fly to the U.S. Was that a big deal to your prosecution not having him?
01:10:30
Yeah, it was huge because, you know, there was a very tight timeline that we were using.
01:10:35
Another witness, Lieutenant Richard Cobb, the lead investigator, passed away from a heart attack.
01:10:41
He was only 53. The community was shook when they heard of his passing. It was shocking for us as well to hear this news and also a blow to your investigation to your, you know, before this trial.
01:10:56
Yeah, losing your lead investigator on a murder case is never a good thing, ever.
01:11:01
Also not good for the state's case, in one of Remy's appeals, a judge found that the original prosecutor mischaracterized the significance of that blood on Remy's sweatshirt.
01:11:11
There was blood on the sweatshirt, but there's no way scientifically to tell whose it is, because it was a mixture.
01:11:20
So it could have been Jen's DNA and his blood. Could have been her blood and his DNA.
01:11:26
Could have been both of them. You know, you just don't know. So that really wasn't of any value.
01:11:31
So Bergman wouldn't use it for the retrial. But he hoped to use Remy's own words against him, specifically something he told me.
01:11:39
When you were interviewing him, there comes a point where you ask him some question about,
01:11:47
you know, he wasn't having a good wife or things weren't going well for him. I had the perfect life. I had a wife, I had a girlfriend, I had kids. I had everything anyone would want.
01:12:00
It was very cold. That's not the reaction of someone who's being falsely accused.
01:12:06
Meanwhile, Remy's attorneys were making their own preparations. They thought the state's timeline didn't make sense.
01:12:12
And they talked to a witness who seemed to contradict it. He said he saw someone driving Jen's van hours later that afternoon.
01:12:20
He could point to precisely where it was driving. He knew almost exactly what time of day this was on December 11th.
01:12:28
It was around 5.30 p.m. Well after this van is allegedly dropped at the apartments when Remy is demonstrably at home and he says the van pulls over.
01:12:37
It's very suspicious. And it was a burnt orange Chrysler town and country van. Did that witness see someone else driving the van that they believe was not Remy?
01:12:48
He couldn't make out who was in the car. But Remy demonstrably couldn't have been driving the van.
01:12:52
And he's at home calling the police. Mr. Garcia was well aware of this witness, but that witness was never called.
01:13:01
Hammond and Swartz believed that could mean the real killer, not Remy, was out dumping the body, the phone, and the van.
01:13:09
And they had one more new discovery, a potentially huge one. They hired a DNA expert to review the forensic reports, and she found this.
01:13:17
Under Jennifer Ramsaran's fingernails was male DNA. It was a partial profile of male DNA.
01:13:25
Their experts said it was not enough to conclusively identify a person, but she could say it did not come from Remy.
01:13:32
That's a mysterious element to this. It is a mysterious element because if you know anything about DNA under fingernails,
01:13:39
most experts will testify that it has to be, it's not from a handshake, right? It's not from me touching Dave's leg quickly.
01:13:46
It's from some sort of, you know, actual contact. Contact like a struggle between a victim and an attacker.
01:13:53
Combine another man's DNA under her fingernails with the van being driven by someone else.
01:14:00
It suddenly was a very interesting defense the second time around. Interesting is one way to describe what happened next.
01:14:10
I have never done. What are you talking about? You have no idea. Have you ever been in prison?
01:14:16
It is hilarious. Remy Ramsaran remained behind bars even after he won an appeal granting him a new trial.
01:14:36
We spoke over Zoom from the county jail. One thing about me I straightforward I tell it like it is And like our last interview he had plenty to say about his innocence You feel you wrongfully accused I always been always been wrongfully accused
01:14:52
And that's the tip of the iceberg. And you might think that I'm arrogant or this or that.
01:14:57
I have nothing to hide. I've always told the truth. I'm a classic oversharer. And guess what?
01:15:04
In all of my interviews with the cops and everything else, I've never said anything
01:15:09
to incriminate myself. He also wanted to talk about his first trial. What convicted me were people and their words,
01:15:18
people and their lies, especially the cops. And he had harsh words for his own defense attorney.
01:15:24
What would you say to Gilberto Garcia? Scumbag. You're a scumbag. He knows you're a scumbag.
01:15:31
Gilberto Garcia had something to say about his former client, too. He now tells Dateline he believed Remy was guilty from day one.
01:15:39
I want to ask you something from our first interview, which was a memorable moment for a lot of people.
01:15:45
You said, I had the perfect life. I had a wife. I had a girlfriend. I had the kids.
01:15:51
You said your life was fantastic. It was. You don't have any regrets about saying that?
01:15:55
None whatsoever. It's the truth. My life was perfect. I had a great life. Period.
01:16:01
Great career. So you haven't reflected on the fact that you had another woman and that that led to all of this?
01:16:07
It's not I had another woman. What a lot of people didn't understand, and I didn't want to say it when I interviewed with you originally, we had threesomes.
01:16:15
It was my wife, Eileen, and myself. There is no issues. And it was going on for a while.
01:16:22
That was a brand new claim. Eileen insists it's not true. And curiously, Remy never told the police about it during the investigation.
01:16:30
Your life is on the line, and you're not going to reveal that? There's no need. What did I tell you from the beginning?
01:16:36
What did they have on me? Nothing because I didn't do anything. Remy then told me this.
01:16:43
How has it been for you sitting in a cell day after day as you you clearly have so much bottled up?
01:16:49
Is this all you think about all day long? Not at all. Prison is easy. You don't understand. There's so much freedom in prisons.
01:16:57
It's crazy to say I'm a guy, Mr. Corporate America, Charles Schwab and Company, American Express, IBM.
01:17:04
Damn, prison is freedom. Look, I have never done. What are you talking about? You have no idea.
01:17:11
Have you ever been in prison? It is hilarious. You can get cell phones. You can get anything you want in prison if you are looking for it.
01:17:19
You're trying to say you're a shark in prison. No, not me. Absolutely not. I'm telling you, prison's a joke.
01:17:28
Prison has a lot of freedom You can get basically anything you want You can get anything you want except for your freedom Do you know what freedom is in there There so much freedom like you
01:17:38
wouldn't believe. It is insane. One of the problems people had with your interview last time was that
01:17:43
they felt like you were arrogant and you were the way you were talking. It was like it was like you
01:17:49
didn't care or you didn't care about your wife. And now here you are saying that you're Mr.
01:17:55
corporate America and prison's easy. It is easy. Remy, you sound arrogant again. It's not
01:18:00
arrogance. It's the truth. Remy, I forgot how much energy you have. It's not about energy.
01:18:06
Look, I missed a marathon. Bottom line, I am innocent. I've always been innocent.
01:18:12
Would the next jury agree? Turns out we'll never know. I think there was challenges from both sides.
01:18:19
I think we had a difficult job. It's very hard to reinvestigate a case that's 10 years old,
01:18:24
but it's also extremely difficult to prosecute a case that's 10 years old. So we're gearing up for trial, and we started talking about plea offers.
01:18:34
At one point, the defense approached me asking if I would take a plea or accept a plea,
01:18:39
and I said, all right, listen, I'll talk to the parents about it. I'll go up today.
01:18:45
Jen's parents made clear what was important to them. We met with the parents and went over the pros and cons,
01:18:51
and they wanted him to go into that courtroom and say that he was guilty. Remy agreed to do just that.
01:18:59
In October 2023, he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter. There would be no second trial.
01:19:07
He admitted to killing his wife, the mother of those kids. Instead of possibly spending the rest of his life in prison, Remy was sentenced to 22 years.
01:19:16
But with time served, his attorneys expect he'll serve less than half. So he'll be out of prison, I believe, somewhere around eight and a half years.
01:19:25
There will be people watching this who will feel like, what? He's killed his wife and that's it?
01:19:31
That's all he has left? Yeah, no doubt. And I get that. But there's a chance we could have went to trial and we lost.
01:19:38
Then there's no more time he gets. If I have the parents of a victim, a murder victim, who are saying to me that we agree to this,
01:19:47
and that brings them some peace, you know, that has a lot of value. With this guilty plea, are you now saying that you killed your wife?
01:19:56
Did you kill Jen? No, not at all. The answer is no. Remy told us that while he said the word guilty in court, he is anything but.
01:20:04
I am not guilty. I am innocent. You have a fantastic new defense team. Why not try to clear your name?
01:20:11
How With this jury Are you kidding me Remy says he would rather spend eight more years in prison for a crime he didn commit than take his chances with a legal system he doesn trust The jury pools are retained
01:20:25
That's just fact. What comes next for you when you get out? Are you going to work to clear your name?
01:20:30
Are you going to reenter society? You're going to clear my name. I'm not worried about that.
01:20:33
Thanks to you folks. Find out whose DNA is underneath my wife's fingernails. And that will go- That is certainly a promise that I cannot
01:20:41
make. Remy's son Glenn has always believed his dad was innocent and supported the decision to take a guilty plea instead of risking life in prison.
01:20:52
Do you think about the future when your dad gets out, which will be within the next decade?
01:20:59
Not really. I don't know what my life will be. I'll graduate with a bachelor's in mechanical engineering. Eight years is a lot of time.
01:21:10
I can't bother to imagine what life will be like. I just have to make do for now.
01:21:17
Eileen told us that even all these years later, thinking about Remy and what happened
01:21:21
still feels like a nightmare she can't wake up from. But she'll also never stop thinking about her friend Jen.
01:21:28
How do you want Jen to be remembered? As a beautiful woman that she was. Kind and loving.
01:21:37
Would do anything for anyone. and she did those things for me. Some people are going to remember you
01:21:44
as being the worst kind of friend to Jen. You know, you can't take back what you've done,
01:21:52
but what we shared as friends, I will always hold close to my heart, our talks and the things we did.
01:22:03
And if you had have gotten that second chance to talk to her, what would you have told her?
01:22:08
I'm so very sorry. So very sorry. What do you miss most about your mom? I mean, I miss everything about her.
01:22:21
You know, I wish she could be here for my sisters. My younger sister especially, because I see my mom in her so much.
01:22:35
That's all for this edition of Dateline. and check out our Talking Dateline podcast.
01:22:40
Andrea Canning and Josh Mankiewicz will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode,
01:22:45
available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again Sunday at 10, 9 central.
01:22:53
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.