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Tonight on Dateline, the first of our special Sunday Mysteries. Craig sent me a message and I knew something terrible must have happened.
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He said, Hannah's jumped out the window. What? She did have a tendency to be a little bit off the rails when she was drunk.
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I was very confused because I didn't see any signs. She didn't say any goodbyes.
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There was no note. She told me that she had had the affair with Craig's friend. Craig was upset, you know, as to be expected.
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There was deep gouges on both hands. This is not a person that jumps out the window.
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Did you think he had killed her? Yes. Did he pick Hannah up and throw her out that window?
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No. Hannah was really wonderful. I just have to believe it was a terrible accident.
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A deadly fall. followed by a father's suspicions. You'll share his search for the truth.
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I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy with The Window. It's a funny thing looking back at photos of happy times.
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You don't know yet which of them is doomed. Her? Him? Maybe both. But don't think of that yet
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The wedding is underway It was 2005 He was a U.S. Navy man of action Craig Becker
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She was a bookish grad student Studying psychology Hannah Hove And they were head over heels in love
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Her college roommate Elizabeth Asiego remembers how the couple first met at a university swimming pool.
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She definitely told me. She was like, I think this guy is the one. And I was super excited about that
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because she had never really mentioned anybody that was going to be special to her.
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Craig and Hannah had been dating for a while when Elizabeth, who incidentally is a first-rate photographer,
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got a call from Craig. So he called me. He said, hey, I want to do this surprise wedding.
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Are you down to come to Destin and take these pictures? So it's on the beach, toes in the sand, the ocean's there?
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Yes. Think of it as a plan to elope, but only the groom knew about it. And it was going to happen on the white sand of a resort on the Florida panhandle.
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So completely in the dark, Hannah drove to the beach hotel and checked in. And what was the cover story for her?
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She was having a spa day, and she was supposed to go pamper herself and have a great day.
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Have a day of beauty, have fun, la tida. And they were going to have a date night at the hotel that night.
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I went and knocked on her door, and she opened the door, and she's like, what are you doing here?
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And I was like, well, open the closet. And she opened the closet, and her wedding dress was in there.
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No. So that's pretty much how she found out that that's what was happening that day.
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Did the dress fit? The dress fit perfectly. The marriage ceremony came off without a hitch as Elizabeth snapped away.
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I think he felt that me taking the pictures was kind of having somebody special there for her so she wouldn't be there by herself.
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You nudged him a little bit into some PG-rated poses. I did. Well, I mean, Craig's a good-looking guy.
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You know, he works out. So there goes the shirt. There goes the shirt. In your memories, Liz, was it a romantic event?
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Very much so. They were in love. They were happy. Craig's sister, Tara Daniels, later heard all about it and was thrilled for the couple.
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They were always together. They were always very affectionate with each other, always laughing, joking.
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She became one of my sisters. Really? Yep. So you liked her? I loved her. The elopement was a moment of joy, a brief respite from the constant concern Tara had for her brother Craig.
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After all, his day job was clearing bombs in war zones. His job assignment became very hazardous.
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It did, yeah. Did you guys worry about that? I mean, he was in charge of units that were defusing explosive devices.
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I mean, that was always a worry. even when I was younger I always worried about him
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Randy LaPelle loved Craig like a brother a brother in arms they'd served together in Afghanistan
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where Lieutenant Craig Becker was a warrior and commanded a 19 man bomb disposal unit
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he was a bold leader and in the long run it was paying huge dividends because he had a warfighter mentality
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and he was assertive he led men well He led men great. The lieutenant, with a top-secret clearance, became a war hero.
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He was awarded two Bronze Stars, in one case for helping save two soldiers' lives.
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Military brass were taking note of Craig's career. Craig was crushing it. Craig could do no wrong, almost.
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Would you trust your life with him? Oh, beyond a shadow of a doubt, without hesitation.
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I love Craig Craig was just better than most By 2013 Craig fast career had resulted in a plum assignment at a NATO base in Belgium
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And he was going great. Yep. I mean, aid to top guy at a NATO facility? Correct.
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Was he on his way to Harvard? He had applied to Harvard, yes. Harvard Business School.
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And it was looking good for him. It was. Hannah and Craig's new home would be a provincial city in Belgium called Mons.
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cobblestone, French-speaking, and appropriately Euro in feel. They'd found a spacious penthouse apartment on the seventh floor of a downtown building.
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That's their bedroom window just below the peak of the sloped roof. Craig settled into his desk job at NATO, and then they were three.
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Baby Isabel entered the picture. She was adorable. The sweetest baby. A very happy baby, very close to both Hannah and Craig.
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Now hold that picture in your mind, this American family off on a European adventure.
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What looked from the outside like a cozy family photo had all gone suddenly horribly wrong.
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Because the barefoot bride on a beach in Florida was now a barefoot young wife moaning in agony on a busy sidewalk in a Belgian city.
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Hannah had fallen 75 feet from her apartment window above. The bystanders would never forget her blood-curdling scream as she dropped.
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And the police wanted to know what happened. What did you observe of that man, Chief Inspector, the husband?
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He was very calm. October 8, 2015, downtown Mons, Belgium. Romero Gonzalez, a mailman by trade, was on a cigarette break at 8.50 p.m.
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when he heard a terrifying shriek from down the street. What did you hear? A woman was screaming.
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And you walked? And I ran. And I ran. You ran here? Here, on the corner. Crumpled on the sidewalk near the entrance to an apartment building
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lay a seriously injured woman dressed only in underwear and a t-shirt. She was terrified.
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And she was alive as she lay on the ground? Yes, she was alive. Bystanders gathered around.
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Then, Romero says, a man ran out from the apartment building speaking English. He was frantically trying to explain to the crowd what had just happened.
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He said, she's drunk. She's drugs, and she jumped. She's taking drugs, she's drunk?
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She's drunk, taking drugs, and she jumped. So this man who comes out, you don't know who he is yet?
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No. The man was Lieutenant Craig Becker. And the woman on the ground was Hannah.
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At that same time, 4,500 miles away in Jacksonville, Florida, John Hove, Hannah's father, was at work when his wife Yvonne called hysterical.
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She just talked to their son-in-law. Craig called Yvonne on the landline to our home and said,
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Hannah's jumped out the window and I have to go down. And Yvonne starts trying to ask him questions and gets very, very little answers.
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And he said, no, I got to go and click. Hannah's jumped out the window. Hannah's jumped out the window.
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Just as stark as the apartment. Craig's call left Hannah's parents in stunned disbelief.
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And we both break down and it's like, what? It can't be right. It can't be true.
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And I said, she jumped out from the seventh floor? Are you... What? John was so distraught he asked a colleague to take him home right away.
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An agonizing 15-minute drive. so we call him up from home and he said well I'm down on the street
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now she's still alive here's the police I can't talk hey Craig Craig Craig what's going on
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I can't talk now click while Hannah's parents waited for news any kind of details
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police officers in Belgium Frederick Vallée and Arthur Scorey were on the scene.
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There is a woman on the street. Maybe she will die. She's in very bad condition.
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They could see EMTs working to stabilize Hannah on that sidewalk. It looked for all the world like an attempted suicide.
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But it was early minutes in the case, and the officers would need to investigate further.
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Craig asked to go to the hospital with his wife. But the officer said he first needed to accompany them upstairs to his apartment, his flat.
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I said to Mr. Baker that we are going in the flat, but he can't touch anything. Don't touch?
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Don't touch anything. Inside, they saw the couple's 16-month-old daughter, Isabel, asleep in her crib.
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Was there any sign of turmoil in the flat, furniture upset, or glasses broken or anything?
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No, the apartment was a normal apartment. So no sign of a fight? No sign of a fight.
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What did you observe of that man, chief inspector, the husband? He was very calm.
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Calm? Yes. The officer thought the 34-year-old husband may have been in shock. When we were at school, we learned that everyone can react differently from a very bad situation.
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Some people shout, some people cry. And maybe it was his reaction to a dramatic accident.
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the officers would have plenty of questions for craig becker most of the what variety Because remarkably even after that 75 fall she was still alive when they loaded her into an ambulance
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And amazingly, there was a flickering hope Hannah herself could tell her own story.
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Jacksonville, Florida. Hannah's parents were an ocean away from their only child.
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Helpless. Waiting to hear if their badly injured daughter would survive. How could it be possible that their fearless Hannah,
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so strong, so determined, might have only minutes more left in her life? A life that began in Sweden.
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That's where the Hoves are from and where Hannah was born. Even as a little girl, she could be feisty and strong-willed.
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Winter time, you have to get all these clothes on. And she decided, I don't think so.
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And so as soon as you dressed her and you dressed yourself, she took half of it off.
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John, his wife, and Hannah emigrated to America, to Florida, in 1989. Hannah was six years old and she thrived here
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Growing up loving the warm weather A place she could indulge in her sports year round
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Hannah must have loved Florida, huh? She did It is so different than Sweden Yeah, you can play tennis all year round here
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She'd play for hours a day, huh? Yeah, she did And then she went into triathlon as well
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She was very fit Very fit Hannah's dad is a mechanical engineer with the engineer's tenacious instinct to identify a problem and solve it.
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He'd made a huge success for himself as an entrepreneur in the transportation business, container freight.
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His pursuit of what used to be called the American dream rewarded his family with the best of everything.
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So, Jason, you and Hannah grew up in some nice neighborhoods, good schools, days filled with tennis.
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Yeah. As much athletics as you wanted, huh? Yeah. Jason Johnson was one of Hannah's best friends growing up.
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She was well-to-do. And she wanted to help people that didn't have as much, huh?
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She was extraordinarily giving. Jason says to understand Hannah is to understand her heart and her spontaneity.
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Like the time late one night when they were in their early 20s driving by a closed public supermarket.
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There, on racks out front, were stacks of bread. So we're like, well, look at all this food that's just going into the dumpster every night.
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Like, that's ridiculous. We are going to go and we're going to take that and we're going to deliver it to, like, homeless shelters.
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And first we load her car. We're having trouble closing the trunk. There's so much bread in it.
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And my car is equally as full of bread. They tried to give the bread away, but there was too much of it.
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It wasn't until later that the two realized, whoops, they'd made a big mistake. In fact, it wasn't day-old bread.
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It wasn't. It was bread that the Publix company fully intended to sell to its customers the next morning.
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Yeah, we had robbed Publix of quite a bit of bread unintentionally. Did anybody know other than the two of you?
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No, but we were waiting for the APB to come out from the... Bonnie and Clyde have struck again.
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Yeah. That woman with the big heart who wanted to feed the world, the triathlete, the young mother,
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was now fighting for her life. The phone rang again at the Hove house. It was Craig. The struggle was over. Hannah had died.
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All parents that lose a child has the same big grief, lifelong grief. It's never going to go. You just missed your child.
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Hannah, just 32, died from massive internal bleeding. She was never able to speak with police to tell them what happened.
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Hannah's old college roommate was preparing for a photo shoot when Hannah's husband called.
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And what in fact did he tell you when he called? That she had passed away. and he just let me cry on the phone.
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Any details at that point, Liz? Nothing. I didn't ask. I was a mess. I was just crying.
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What did you hear in his voice? He sounded devastated to me. Go, Isabelle, go! Elizabeth immediately thought of Hannah's daughter, Isabelle.
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Look! Yay! Who would now grow up without her mother. Good job! Uh-oh! Tell me about what that meant for her.
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to have a child. She was obsessed with her. She loved her daughter. And she told me that was what life was about.
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Everyone on both sides of the ocean in those moments grappling with so many unanswered questions.
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There was hope the police investigation that was underway would offer some solid answers.
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But instead, it may have just added more confusion. So you didn't think it was a homicide?
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No. Belgian police were investigating what appeared to be a suicide. Craig Becker said his wife had leaped
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from a seventh bedroom window in their penthouse apartment Chief Inspector Arthur Skory He told us that his wife was in depression And he told us that that night she was upset
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and then she mixed wine and medicine. Mixed wine with some medicine. My wife is clinically depressive.
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What's more, she is using alcohol in an unwise fashion. Yet the way that he told us could be very realistic.
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Craig told police that after work, the couple had a lasagna dinner together. He had one glass of wine, but he said Hannah drank much more, eventually draining the bottle.
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And at one point, the husband said, she took some pills. But he wasn't sure what kind or how many.
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Then later, as the couple was giving their daughter a bath, Craig said Hannah became so drowsy, he told her to go to bed.
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It was about 8 p.m. She was wearing only her underwear and a t-shirt. With his wife tucked away for the night,
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Hannah's husband said it was about 50 minutes later when he heard a noise from the bedroom.
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He opened the door and saw his wife's lower body go out the window. That meant she went head first.
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The husband was telling you a story of suicide, the steps that lead up to suicide.
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Police also noted the unusual by American standards design of the window itself, how it swung out and away with a more narrow opening at the bottom.
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So they regarded an accidental fall as unlikely. On the fourth floor balcony directly below the Becker's apartment, there were shattered flower pots on top of a patio table.
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There was a table on the balcony. So she fell onto the people below's balcony. Yes.
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and then catapulted into the street. Yes. Other observations, her cell phone in the living room,
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a partially open suitcase on the floor, and next to her bed, a wine bottle and glass.
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And when I go in the room, I see the bottle was empty and the glass was, there was a little bit of wine in the glass.
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The officers say Craig, meanwhile, was cooperative. He showed them his arms, and the police didn't notice any scratches or injuries to his body.
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The husband also turned over the unmarked bottle that contained the pills he said Hannah took.
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That bottle was sent immediately to the hospital. To the cops on the scene, it all added up to one easy conclusion.
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For us, the first time, what we see, what we heard, it was a suicide. So you didn't think it was a homicide?
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No. In a surprisingly brief amount of time, about two hours after Hannah's fall,
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the police investigation was concluded. Suicide. Here's how it works in Belgium.
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A judge was phoned that night and officially signed off on the investigation. At that point, is this as we say in English, a case closed?
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Was that the end of the matter? In Belgium, when the circumstances are clear, yes, the case closed.
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after the case was closed Craig opened up about some other details of the night to his family
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his sister Tara says Craig tried to save Hannah before she fell Craig heard her scream and he ran
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to see her and she was out the window and what does he do? He tried to catch her
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he tried to bring her back but wasn't able to and Craig said when he went downstairs
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where his wife lay fatally injured she spoke to him What does Craig see when he gets down there?
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Hannah, still alive. He said that she kept saying, I am so sorry. Please help me.
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I love you. As for Hannah's parents, two days after their daughter's death and after a long flight from Florida, they arrived in Belgium.
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They were surprised to see Craig accompanied by two military escorts. They were assigned to keep a watch on Craig.
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Yeah, they put him on suicide watch because it was deemed as, Hannah had jumped as a suicide thing.
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And therefore, he being the husband, grieving husband, they put him sort of automatically on suicide watch.
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They gathered at the apartment with a sloped roof to grieve with their son-in-law.
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Then something happened that changed the climate of the case forever. John went looking for the window where Hannah went out
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So I walk into the bedroom I open the window and I look down and I see all these
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tracks marks on the shingle roof So I call him, hey Craig come look at this So he comes into the doorway
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of the bedroom I said, have you seen these marks? He said, no, I haven't looked down.
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What Hannah's dad saw stunned him, and it would make him question everything he had been told about that night.
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It was beginning to seem to him that his daughter's death just might be foul play.
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What John Hove saw out his daughter's window rattled him to his core. These are photos of the scratch marks he observed
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on the sloping roof below. To Hannah's father, they looked for all the world like the grooves made by someone
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clawing with their hands and legs in a desperate act to hold on. This is not a person that jumps out the window.
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This is not Marx from anybody jumping out the window. So immediately there, it's like, no, this is impossible.
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Catch marks as though somebody's trying to restrain themselves? Right. Then something else caught the father's eye.
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Small nails sticking up from the shingles, no longer neatly nailed in. I saw several copper nails that were standing straight up.
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That half inch was straight up. It was pointing up and then bent up. What did that tell you?
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They were right in the track where Hannah's hands had made the marks. Ah. So as she went down, theoretically, the sloping roof, did her hands cause the tail stood?
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Yes. So I said, you know, I really want to see her hands. If this was done by Hannah and she did not jump, she was frantically trying to hold on,
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and the copper nails would have gone into her hand and ripped her all away. The grieving father had gone into amateur detective mode
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John decided he would go to the morgue and see his daughter's body for himself Were there, in fact, injuries to her hands
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made as she tried and failed to arrest her fall? Hannah's mom, Yvonne, was totally against such a macabre visit
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Yvonne said, really, do we have to do that? And I said, well, for Hannah we have to
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Reluctantly, Hannah's mom agreed By then, their daughter's body had been moved to a funeral home.
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The parents asked to inspect their dead daughter's hands. The response I got from the proprietor there said, no, sorry, we cannot do that.
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I said, it's very important. All we have to do is get our hands up like this so I can take photos.
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Well, let me go and ask the supervisor, the man in charge. And she came back after five minutes and said, yes, we can do that.
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Hannah's parents entered a room where their daughter's body lay in a casket. Her hands were turned up, and John took some photos.
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Very traumatic. And there was the cut-up hands. There was deep gouges on both hands, starting here, you know, going up.
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And the pain that that had caused her must have been tremendous. You thought that was caused by her trying to control her slide down?
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Yeah. Sure. I don't want to go off this roof. Exactly. Yeah. And then John started to wonder about Craig's account of seeing Hannah go out the window.
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I open the door. I see a hand or it might have been a foot disappear out the window.
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Just like that. You see something. Maybe it's a hand. Maybe it's a foot. And I said, hand or a foot, you can't see the difference?
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Well, you know, it went so fast. I said, okay, well, did you rush to the window, run to the window, look down?
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He said, no, no, no, no. You didn't look down? No. And so I said, so what did you do then?
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If you didn't look down, did you run downstairs? And he said, well, I took the elevator.
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You took the elevator? Well, why didn't you run? It would be faster. Wheels were turning in John Hove's head.
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The son-in-law's story wasn't adding up, and forensically to him, the scratch marks on the roof did not describe a body in free fall.
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Had Mann's officials ruled too quickly that his daughter's death was a suicide? What did you think of the quality of the Belgian investigation, John?
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I mean, they didn't really do much of an investigation, and they just concluded, oh, this looks like suicide to us too.
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She probably jumped, you know. John started to ponder something simply unthinkable.
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Did Craig throw Hannah out that window? Hannah's best friend in Belgium had questions, too.
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I met her at a barbecue for my husband's workplace. Did you think I might have a friend here?
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I did. I liked her right away. Ida Blomqvist was a Danish military wife and officer herself.
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She first met Hannah at a military function, and they quickly became very close.
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She says Hannah had seemed so happy, not suicidal. So Ida became suspicious. I was very, very confused because I didn't see any signs.
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At one point in particular, anything that just made no sense to you of the various issues?
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That she didn't say any goodbyes, that she didn't, you know, there was no note, there was no nothing.
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Were you angry with her? It would be natural. I was. I was angry because the word suicide, I don't like the word.
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I don't like people doing that because I think it's a selfish act. So I was angry with her, but then the anger went away because I knew she couldn't have done that.
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That's because Ida knew Craig and Hannah's relationship had not only turned rocky,
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it appeared their marriage was coming apart at the seams. Why are you following me with that? I f***ing hate it.
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They look like f***. They're horrible. In the days after Hannah's death, her father was overwhelmed with grief.
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That grief caused him to take a hard look at the history of Hannah and Craig's relationship,
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seeking any clues that might shed light on what happened. Remember how Craig surprised Hannah with that romantic beachfront wedding?
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Well, her parents didn't see it as a dreamy, soft-focused memory. Hardly. They weren't ticked at her.
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We got a phone call and Hannah said, Hey Dad I just want you to know that I got married And I said What Yeah ten days ago What You know it like complete shock And I said whoa whoa whoa what going on Is Craig there Put Craig on the phone Let me talk
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to him. And I said, what's going on, Craig? You're marrying our daughter? You didn't even talk to us?
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And that was the first sign of, I had a sense that he wanted to control the situation and not be
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control. Hannah's friend Jason says from the beginning he also saw troubling signs in the
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relationship. He felt Craig tried to isolate her from loved ones. She told me he was very possessive,
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very jealous, and he tended to not treat her friends well or respectfully. He wanted your
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nose out of the tent, huh? That's the feeling that I definitely got, that she was already,
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you know, sort of policing herself for him. Jason remembers his once frequent calls with Hannah slowly drying to a trickle.
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Yet Jason also knew how alone his friend felt because Craig continued to volunteer for overseas combat tours.
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He's a military guy. He's not in the house very much. He's gone a lot. Was Hannah becoming a lonely woman, do you think?
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I definitely think, yeah, I mean, he doesn't even have the consideration to maybe decline
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deployment and, you know, spend some time with this woman. Five years into their marriage, Hannah confided to friends that her loneliness had led her
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to make a mistake she'd later regretted. It happened right before they moved to Belgium, and it involved one of her husband's buddies.
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She told me that she had had the affair with Craig's friend. She was sleeping with him.
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She definitely had regrets about having done it. She did feel very guilty about the situation.
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Did you say to your friend, look, are you guys going to be able to hold this marriage together?
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I asked her, what are you going to do? And she told me it's really bad. It's been really bad.
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She says, I made some mistakes recently, and I feel like I have to try to atone for them.
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She's referring to the affair that she had? Yeah. It was after they moved overseas that Craig learned of the extramarital relationship.
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He saw a message on his wife's laptop. Craig's friend, Randy. Did you know that she had an affair with his friend?
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Craig told me about it. He was upset, you know, as to be expected. He was shocked and hurt and taken back by that.
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If Craig had been controlling before, Jason says it only got worse once Craig learned of the affair.
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She calls me and she's telling me about how difficult it is to maintain contact with me.
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With you? Yeah, because she can't have my number in her cell phone because Craig is policing her cell phone at this point.
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And who's this kind of thing? Yeah, he really objects to her having any man in her cell phone.
00:33:09
But as you say, you're gay. You're not a romantic threat to him, to his claim on her or whatever.
00:33:13
Exactly. What's your take on that, Jason? What's going on? I was like, this is not normal.
00:33:20
And the marital climate didn't improve while the couple was living in Belgium. Ida, her closest friend there, remembers liking Hannah immediately
00:33:29
But she never really warmed up to Craig It was when he came to our house He made me feel uncomfortable in my own home
00:33:39
How could that be? I don't know, it was kind of the way he carried himself Or the way he looked at things, or just his posture
00:33:46
Like you weren't measuring up to his standards? Exactly Then there was that one unforgettable
00:33:52
and what Eda felt was an unforgivable incident. It changed her opinion of Craig forever.
00:33:58
What are you doing? Videotaping you. Hannah wanted to surprise her husband by making some drapes for their penthouse.
00:34:03
Am I supposed to, like, you're videotaping me? So excited to show him her creation, she recorded the moment he first saw them.
00:34:10
I think it looks f***ing terrible. I think it's the most hideous fabric I've ever seen in my entire life.
00:34:15
And I want to take it down immediately. He thought they were hideous. Why are you following me with that?
00:34:22
I hate it. They look like they're horrible. How disappointed was she? Very disappointed. She had
00:34:28
put such effort into this. She had went to the store to buy the fabrics. I'm sure the craftsmanship
00:34:34
is wonderful, but whatever colors that you and your friend picked out make me want to throw up
00:34:39
in my mouth. In the video, he referred to me as your friend. I didn't even have a name. You didn't
00:34:45
have a name? I was just a friend. She had spent a whole day at my house making the drapes and she
00:34:51
had hung them herself and then she was very disappointed. Was that a moment in the marriage
00:34:57
where you learned something about Craig and Hannah? He should have told her that in a nicer way that
00:35:04
he didn't like them. It wasn't a place they were going to spend the rest of their lives living in.
00:35:09
So I think that's what people do in a marriage. They're compromises. That video later made Hannah's
00:35:15
dad wonder what else was taking place behind closed doors in his daughter's relationship.
00:35:20
No matter. For John, it was becoming crystal clear what happened to his daughter.
00:35:25
Did you think he had killed her? Yes. By winter 2014, less than a year before her death,
00:35:47
Craig and Hannah's relationship was ripped and torn on the rocks Hannah had hopes a family Christmas trip back home to Florida could help heal her marriage Her father John recalls the visit It was very tense already when they arrived What was the issue Well the issue was that he was still upset about her affair
00:36:10
And, you know, she was blaming him for not paying attention to her. And they argued about it openly.
00:36:17
In front of you? Yeah. To the point where he actually first suggested, you know what, I'm going to go to the hotel.
00:36:25
I can't put up with this in him. I said, you know what, Craig, that's a good idea.
00:36:28
He left for a hotel, and he said, I'm going to rebook my ticket. I'm going back to Belgium.
00:36:35
Craig flew home alone. It was then that Hannah's family and friends sat her down, intervention style,
00:36:41
and bluntly asked what was going on in her marriage. She tells me that he had been emotionally abusive almost the entire relationship,
00:36:52
that he had been very controlling and that this had all just been a mistake and she was going to leave him.
00:37:01
And I was like, that's great. I think you should leave him. And don't go back to Belgium.
00:37:05
Yeah, don't go back to Belgium. We're pleading with her every day. Please, Hannah, stay.
00:37:12
Stay here, get a job here. I mean, cool, at least stay for six months. You know, you don't have to go back.
00:37:19
But against advice of family and friends Hannah decided to return to Europe with baby Isabel
00:37:26
She wanted to keep her commitment to the marriage That if she wouldn't go back It would shine a bad light on her that she's given up
00:37:34
That she couldn't handle the situation Does this go back to her being the toughest swimmer in the pool
00:37:40
And the toughest athlete on the triathlete course? I think so I'm not going to give up
00:37:45
I'm going to finish this I'm going to do this I'm going to make this work Hannah got a new job working at the base youth center.
00:37:55
But when it came to the marriage, Hannah and Craig threw in the towel. Eight months after returning to Belgium, they both realized they couldn't make it work.
00:38:04
By the summer of 2015, the marriage was all but history. Craig and Hannah were sharing an apartment but sleeping in separate bedrooms.
00:38:12
A divorce was in the works. Hannah, meanwhile, had struck up a relationship with a guy at work named Chris.
00:38:18
He was the maintenance man there, and he was going to help Hannah move her stuff when she and Craig finally broke up.
00:38:24
Craig, according to her friends, did not like the new boyfriend. Craig did not approve of him at all.
00:38:30
No, apparently not. He was being replaced by this new guy and his station in life, what, he was a maintenance guy, a janitor.
00:38:38
Yeah, he was a janitor. Did that not add up to Craig? No, his standards, no. No matter.
00:38:45
It seemed Hannah had taken her lumps and was ready to start the next chapter of her life.
00:38:50
At work, she attended a luncheon with her colleagues just hours before her death.
00:38:55
Her supervisor, Mary Louise Manning, says she seemed happy. She was really in good spirits.
00:39:01
She had just, because the divorce was progressing, and she had to find an alternate place to live,
00:39:06
and she had found another one, and she had just signed the lease on that apartment,
00:39:09
and she was super excited for the next step. In fact, Hannah signed a lease for that new apartment on the day she died.
00:39:17
She was starting a new life. She found furniture for her apartment online. She just signed the papers for the apartment?
00:39:23
Yeah, she signed the lease on the very same day, and she was going to China. Hannah had a long planned trip to meet her dad in China.
00:39:33
Her flight was scheduled to leave the day after she died. And it appeared she was getting ready.
00:39:39
Remember, police took a photo of luggage on her apartment floor that night. She was going to come meet me there, and then after two days she was going to go back.
00:39:49
It's kind of exciting. Yeah. For Hannah's friends and family, her actions those last few hours of her life didn't add up to someone who was suicidal.
00:40:00
And her dad especially couldn't stop thinking about those images engraved in his mind.
00:40:05
The long marks on the roof beneath his daughter's window. In my view, it's impossible that this is created by somebody jumping out the window.
00:40:15
John felt the marks couldn't have been made by someone intentionally jumping, especially considering the unusual way the window opened.
00:40:24
So you had to crawl out under the window and then just let yourself go, rolling or perhaps you could close the window from outside and stand up and jump.
00:40:34
either way you wouldn't make the marks that I saw right there. That's when John concluded his son-in-law was lying to him and everyone else.
00:40:44
Did you think he had killed her? Yes. Yeah. I was convinced. Were you open to the possibility for reasons unknown that she might have done it?
00:40:54
That she might have jumped herself? Very remote. Remote, perhaps, but not out of the question.
00:41:01
Because Hannah had talked about suicide in the past. And she flies off the handle and is just really upset.
00:41:11
She says at one point, maybe I should just kill myself. She was only 32 years old.
00:41:30
Go, Isabel, go! And by all accounts, a devoted loving mother to her daughter, Isabel.
00:41:35
Good job! Family and close friends of Hannah started questioning whether she would take her own life
00:41:41
and speculated about something gruesome. Had her husband thrown her out the window?
00:41:49
But even those close to Hannah couldn't discount her complicated mental health history.
00:41:55
When she was in her early 20s Hannah struggled to keep weight on And after a bad breakup with a boyfriend her problem got worse Jason was her roommate at the time
00:42:06
What happened? What got triggered? She's a little depressed because of how this relationship sort of panned out, for sure.
00:42:11
Like, she invested a lot in it, and she's not really eating enough. She's not eating healthfully.
00:42:17
You thought she had an eating disorder. She definitely did at this point. She was too thin.
00:42:21
She was underweight. She was probably under 100 pounds. And she's maybe 5'8 or 5'9.
00:42:28
Then, one night, her world seemed to collapse. It happened when her parents were at her and Jason's apartment for dinner.
00:42:36
She has maybe two glasses of wine, and on her second glass of wine, she's just clearly inebriated.
00:42:42
And we, you know, either her father or I broached the topic of her eating disorder, her anorexia.
00:42:49
And we're like, you're too thin. and she flies off the handle and is just really upset.
00:42:57
And she says at one point that she is, maybe I should just kill myself. I'd like to kill myself.
00:43:05
Yeah, and she's like, well, maybe I do. Did you think she was serious? Did you think that she might have killed herself?
00:43:10
I didn't. I mean, I think she might have if we hadn't have had the intervention.
00:43:14
the right thing is to hand this over to somebody professional and so you start with calling uh
00:43:26
9-1-1 and and basically i said i you know i'm here with my daughter and she says she doesn't
00:43:32
want to leave anymore and you didn't know whether that was a fact or you didn't know no you didn't
00:43:38
want to find out, certainly. Exactly. You know, you, how serious is this, you know?
00:43:45
Hannah was voluntarily committed to a hospital. She was released after a few days.
00:43:51
They deemed that she's no harm to herself. She's not sick or ill or, you know, it's not going to
00:43:57
go any further. Later, Jason says, Hannah told him she felt like her old self. She said something
00:44:04
like I realized my life wasn't that bad. It was pretty good and I had a lot to live for and I can't
00:44:11
believe that I let myself get to the state that I let myself get to. As the years went by, Hannah
00:44:19
gained back her weight and seemed to be in altogether better spirits, eventually of course
00:44:24
marrying Craig. But before they moved to Belgium, Craig groused to his friend Randy that his wife
00:44:32
had an alcohol problem. I know he was very upset with her drinking being, you know,
00:44:39
inebriated pretty heavily and very regularly. So that bothered him a lot. So we all know there's kind of gradations of being a bad drunk. Were you hearing stories
00:44:51
about her being a sloppy, embarrassing drunk, making a scene? Yeah. So that was part of what
00:44:56
upset Craig is that he would be embarrassed to be around her when she got that way and felt like
00:45:02
He couldn't go anywhere with her. And Hannah's emotional state seemed at times to go up and down.
00:45:08
As in the instance when her old college roommate had a chance encounter with her at an airport.
00:45:14
I walked up to the gate and there's my friend, her husband and a baby. The unexpected meeting happened during that visit the family made back to the States from Belgium,
00:45:24
about 10 months before Hannah's death. Elizabeth was on the same flight as the family, and Craig made her an offer too good to pass up.
00:45:32
Immediately, Craig went and told them that he was giving me his seat. And so they were in first class. So I went and sat with her.
00:45:39
So lucky you. You're in first with your friend. I know. So that we could catch up. And he sat in my seat in the back.
00:45:46
Elizabeth says Hannah opened up and shared she was taking prescription medicines that made her feel not like herself.
00:45:53
She felt that the medication that she was on wasn't correct. and that she felt that she used the word zombie a lot,
00:46:01
that she was basically a zombie. Where was she with her emotional well-being? What did you think was going on?
00:46:07
This was the first time that I had seen her in a state that I would call unstable.
00:46:15
I did not see her as the Hannah that I knew. Elizabeth can't remember what medications her friend told her she had been taking,
00:46:25
But Hannah had multiple prescriptions to treat severe anxiety and depression. On that plane, Elizabeth says she no longer recognized the person sitting next to her.
00:46:35
What had changed, Liz? Well, one, there was a lot of drinking in a 45-minute flight.
00:46:40
But two, it was just, she just wasn't herself. It felt like a shell of who she was.
00:46:48
In hindsight, Craig's sister, Tara, says she now feels Hannah never got the support she needed.
00:46:53
Hannah's mental stability, her mental health what would you want people to know about her?
00:46:59
Hannah was a wonderful human a wonderful human but I think she fell prey to the fact that she
00:47:06
didn't have the diagnoses maybe that she should have and didn't necessarily have
00:47:12
the mental health help that she probably should have had and Tara thinks it's possible
00:47:19
Hannah's past problems reared their head again because she was going through the stress of divorce and starting a new life.
00:47:26
If you have mental health issues, you understand that things can change at the drop of a hat.
00:47:31
And you think that's what happened there? I do. Hannah's dad strongly disagreed.
00:47:36
He felt Hannah had put those issues behind her. So he made the decision to go to the police.
00:47:42
But as it turned out, others had already beaten him to it. so It's called SHAPE, or Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe.
00:48:06
It's the place where Lieutenant Craig Becker worked, and so did Police Inspector Claude Closin.
00:48:13
He was assigned to a Belgian federal police station located on the base, and within 48 hours after Hannah's death, an American major walked in with an unusual story.
00:48:24
A major came in our office and said that Mr. Becker took pills out of a drawer where he used to work in the office.
00:48:35
He had gone to retrieve from his old desk these pills. And the fact that he came, we found it a little bit suspicious.
00:48:44
The major said Lieutenant Becker came back to retrieve a bag of pink pills from a desk he'd once used.
00:48:50
The major also said he was aware that Hannah had just died. and thought he should tell someone about those mysterious pills.
00:48:58
Inspector Closon decided he should let a magistrate or judge know this new information.
00:49:03
And this magistrate said, we will have an autopsy done. An autopsy. Hannah's body was to be cremated, but the judge put a stop to that.
00:49:14
Rather, Hannah's body was sent instead to a coroner. As a federal agent, Closon had not been involved with a local investigation
00:49:22
that concluded Hannah died by suicide. But after a stream of visitors started showing up at his station,
00:49:30
he now found himself on the case. You'd had more people drop into your office, didn't you?
00:49:34
We had a lot of people, and they came to tell us it's not logical that she committed suicide
00:49:41
and she didn't have any problem. Eventually, Hannah's parents also went to the inspector's office,
00:49:50
bringing with them those photos of the scratched-up roof tiles and their conviction that their son-in-law was behind Hannah's death.
00:49:58
Hannah's friend Ida also showed up. I felt I was going to do it for Hannah and especially for Isabel
00:50:04
because I didn't want her growing up thinking that her mother chose not to be her mother
00:50:09
but chose to commit suicide. So what was your message to the police? I don't know what happened here but I don't like what I'm hearing about this.
00:50:16
I said I don't believe what Hannah's husband had told me over the phone about the suicide and her killing herself.
00:50:23
Another arrival, someone else who also had concerns, Hannah's new boyfriend from work.
00:50:30
What did he have to say? He came to the office and said that they had a relation together
00:50:36
and that he wanted to give all the text messages he has in his phone. He had a story told by his phone.
00:50:43
Yeah. On the morning she died, Hannah and her boyfriend exchanged text messages.
00:50:50
In one, Hannah said, Oh, and by the way, I love you, Christopher Lamar, and I don't care if it makes you squirm when I say it.
00:50:58
Chris responded, But that same night, the messages turned unsettling and dark. At 8.37 p.m., about 13 minutes before Hannah's fall from the window, her boyfriend received this message.
00:51:16
Craig is being so damn sweet and it is confusing. I love him and I love you. I have the sweetest little baby with him.
00:51:25
He wasn't a-hole, but now he's changed. 41 seconds later, and he doesn't want me anymore because he knows I've been with you.
00:51:34
The final message about 10 minutes before her fall was this. I effing hate my life.
00:51:41
The phone records kind of a history of the last hours of her life, huh? Yeah, exactly.
00:51:48
Closon, now retired, was a 39-year police veteran. And as he started to do some digging, he noticed someone else had come in to talk to one of his colleagues two days before Hannah died.
00:51:59
It was her husband, Craig. He just came to the office in order to explain that he will separate of his wife
00:52:07
and that he didn't want that the friend of his wife come into his apartment to do the moving.
00:52:16
Craig said he didn't like that Hannah's new boyfriend, Chris, had been to the apartment and had moved out some of her personal things.
00:52:22
So, Inspector Lieutenant Craig Becker comes to me. His first point is, I think my wife's new boyfriend is bad news.
00:52:28
I want you to tell him to stay away. But he also wanted to tell you about his wife, didn't he?
00:52:33
He wanted to also to explain to my colleague that his wife had problem with alcohol and medication.
00:52:41
That her behavior was not proper. According to the report that was filed, Craig said his wife drank between half and three quarters of a bottle of wine alone five days a week.
00:52:53
The officer then noted, we asked him what he wanted our police to do. And he repeated two or three times that the only thing he wanted was a written record of coming to our office.
00:53:04
Lieutenant Becker comes in, makes his complaint. There's nothing you can do with it.
00:53:07
It wasn't a complaint. He just wanted a trace that he had been at the police station.
00:53:13
Four days after Hannah's death, John was at the couple's apartment when he learned the police had reopened the case.
00:53:21
We're in the apartment and there is sort of a ring on the telecom and it says to the police, we'd like to come up.
00:53:35
And I think there was a total of 10 or 12 detectives. There was a photographer. There was technicians.
00:53:42
And this is the first real attempt to begin an investigation? Yes. So basically everybody sits still. Who's Craig Becker?
00:53:50
Identified him And they said okay you start an investigation in the death of your wife and we going to detain you for interrogation And we started the search with the criminal police and we have seized a lot of things
00:54:11
so the phones, computers, and so on. Over the next few weeks, Craig was called in multiple times to be interviewed by detectives.
00:54:23
And then, five months after Hannah's death, Lieutenant Becker was called in for another talk.
00:54:29
This time, there was a magistrate or judge present. We asked him if he killed his wife.
00:54:36
He said, no, no, no, no. And the magistrate said, Mr. Becker, you're lying. I deliver you on the arrest for one.
00:54:42
He was charged with murder by Belgian authorities. Murder with premeditation. Premeditation.
00:54:48
Yeah. Police accused Craig of meticulously planning his wife's murder, then trying to make it look like a suicide.
00:54:58
With Craig now under arrest, another crisis was about to erupt that involved baby Isabel.
00:55:05
So kind of an APB all points bulletin? Yes. Stop a woman with a small child? Yes.
00:55:18
Built in the 1800s, it's one of Belgium's oldest prisons. And after his arrest in 2016, the place where Lieutenant Craig Becker resided.
00:55:37
He'd been considered a flight risk, so he was held without bond. His sister, Tara.
00:55:43
What does he tell you stories about what his conditions were? Where they put him?
00:55:47
Abhorrent. I know that there was a riot during his time there, and he was not given access to family, friends, council because of that riot.
00:56:00
With Craig behind bars, someone needed to care for baby Isabel, and that ignited a new crisis.
00:56:06
My mom went out to Belgium as per Craig's wishes to get Isabel, and there was a back and forth and a fight to get Isabel.
00:56:14
Hannah's parents got word from a friend that the plan was for Becker's mother to bring Isabel back to the U.S.
00:56:22
We've heard that the mother is going to give the child to one of Becker's buddies in Norfolk or somewhere in Virginia.
00:56:32
And we thought that sounded horrendous. We have blood relatives here. We can take care of her.
00:56:37
If you can't take care of her, we certainly can. John immediately had his attorney call Belgian authorities, who sprang into action and put out an alert.
00:56:48
So kind of an APB, all points bulletin? Yes. Stop a woman with a small child? Yes.
00:56:55
Craig's mom was stopped at the Frankfurt, Germany airport, where she and Isabel were making a connecting flight back to the U.S.
00:57:02
Isabel was taken away by German Department of Children and Families overnight. so she was in a foreign country with people she didn't know.
00:57:14
Isabel was returned to Belgium, where she was temporarily placed with an American military family.
00:57:20
Within six weeks, a court did award custody to Craig's mom. Hannah's dad was disappointed with the decision.
00:57:30
And while he waited for Craig's murder trial to begin, he threw himself into a project he'd been working on for 10 years in Florida.
00:57:38
restoring this magnificent waterfront mansion to its nearly hundred-year-old glory has been his seemingly endless labor of love.
00:57:46
Hannah really wanted to live here in the apartment. This was going to be Hannah's digs right here where we are, huh?
00:57:52
Yes, exactly. The carriage house was being built for Hannah and Isabel, part of John's lavish plans for his 15,000 square foot mansion.
00:58:03
I've had this house renovation as a sort of anchor point for me. Therapy? Therapy, yeah.
00:58:12
Keeps me away from going into a corner and feeling sorry for myself. Sorry for himself because there was even more tragedy after his daughter's death.
00:58:26
John says his wife never got over losing Hannah. Jason says on his family visits, he could tell Yvonne was struggling with it all.
00:58:35
Every time I went and saw Yvonne, she was so unhappy, so desperately unhappy. Yvonne was the pride of her life.
00:58:45
And along the way, you say she tried to commit suicide twice, take her own life.
00:58:49
Yeah. She was so depressed and despair about losing Hannah. Yeah. Then John's wife suffered a medical emergency.
00:58:59
Early morning, 2.30 in the morning, she starts talking incoherent, like a different language.
00:59:04
So I try to get her out of bed. So I get her loaded into the car. Finally get her out in the garage.
00:59:11
And I'm trying to lift her and put her in the front seat and she dies in my arms.
00:59:17
The cause of death was a ruptured aneurysm. Yvonne was 69. The couple had been married 42 years.
00:59:24
When the fire rescue came in, put his fingers here and said, oh, she's gone. That's when you lose it.
00:59:33
When you hear somebody, a professional, tell you that your wife's dead. Two years after losing his daughter, John was now mourning the death of his wife.
00:59:45
Around the same time Craig defense team had gotten the case transferred from the Belgian court system to a U military court Craig returned to the States He was then placed on active duty no longer incarcerated
01:00:05
His family and friends just couldn't understand any of it. Why was he arrested in the first place?
01:00:11
And even worse, why did he now have to stand trial for murder? Craig's sister says at the end of the day,
01:00:19
the person she holds most responsible for her brother facing life in prison is Hannah.
01:00:25
The burden of being in court and having your brother on trial for murder. I do think that it's Hannah's.
01:00:32
You still love her? I love her to pieces. And I am so sad to be saying those words.
01:00:38
But I do think that it's Hannah's fault. In a bad moment, she made a poor decision.
01:00:43
Yes. Craig's military friend agrees. Not an easy conclusion, but he feels everything points to Hannah dying by suicide.
01:00:53
There's no question, Randy, that Hannah went out the window and ended on the street.
01:00:58
What makes sense to you? I mean, I don't want to sound cold, but for me, if it looks like a duck, it smells like a duck.
01:01:06
I mean, she had mental health issues. She's drunk and or medicated. It doesn't sound shocking to me that she could have jumped just out of frustration and depression.
01:01:19
And likewise, can you say that familiar phrase beyond a reasonable doubt? that Craig is the one responsible for it, that he is guilty.
01:01:26
There's no question about it. There is absolutely no way. You have that evidence.
01:01:30
It's absolutely beyond reasonable doubt. Seven years after Hannah's death, Craig would finally stand trial for murder.
01:01:39
And prosecutors were ready to show jurors a demonstration of how they think he did it.
01:01:53
15 miles outside of Mons, Lieutenant Craig Becker's court-martial was about to get underway
01:02:06
at a U.S. airbase in Belgium. Hannah's family and friends had been waiting nearly seven years to see her husband held
01:02:13
accountable for her death. Finally, in April of 2022, Lieutenant Craig Becker returned to Belgium to stand trial.
01:02:21
Accused of killing his wife by throwing her out their seventh floor window. Hannah's dad tried to prepare himself.
01:02:29
I mean, the whole thing's tough. It's, you know, you don't get trained for this.
01:02:34
And it just comes back up. You know, think about Hannah every day. Craig pleaded not guilty.
01:02:44
His military court-martial was run like a normal criminal trial. except the jury was made up of officers at ranks higher than Lieutenant Becker's.
01:02:54
The prosecutor began by arguing that Hannah was anything but suicidal. Friends, family, and co-workers all testified she was moving on with her life
01:03:04
with her new boyfriend, her new apartment, new plans. Hannah's boss from the youth center took the stand.
01:03:11
I just know that our staff definitely did not believe that she committed suicide, that's for sure.
01:03:16
Based on what? Just her personality and her demeanor, just being happy, and there was no signs of any depression.
01:03:26
And it was Isabel, too. She loved her daughter so much. Her daughter was her world.
01:03:31
And she was looking forward, as you saw it. Yeah. The concept of her committing suicide and leaving her daughter, none of us could fathom.
01:03:39
We just couldn't believe it. Hannah's friend, Ida, was called as a witness, too.
01:03:44
Here he is at the table. You're testifying against him. Did he look at you? Did you look at him?
01:03:50
I decided to be the one looking at him because that was my choice. And I just felt sad for him because he looked so small.
01:03:59
Ida testified that after Hannah's miserable trip back to Florida at Christmastime,
01:04:03
she returned to Belgium a different woman. She had made a decision to cut way back on her drinking.
01:04:09
People would later talk about Hannah and alcohol drink. Could she handle drink? Do you remember her?
01:04:16
We only got drunk once during our friendship that lasted two years, so she wasn't a drunk or an alcoholic.
01:04:23
And to underscore that, the prosecution played one of its strongest cards, a true head snapper.
01:04:30
Hannah's blood work showed only a trace amount of alcohol the night she died. And the analysis of her hair showed she hadn't abused alcohol for months on end.
01:04:40
That contradicted her husband's account that she was a heavy drinker, including information that he'd filed with police just two days before her death.
01:04:49
So he had lied when he came into the police station and said, He lied, for sure.
01:04:53
You need to know that she's a big drinker. Yeah. What do you think he was doing that day?
01:04:57
He was already preparing his murder. You need to be aware that this woman, Hannah, has got troubles.
01:05:03
Yeah. Seeding the story. Yeah. Preparing everything. Preparing the story, getting you ready for it.
01:05:10
Investigators alleged it was all part of Craig's master plan to kill his wife. And part of that plan included picking up a bottle of wine the night of Hannah's death.
01:05:20
Detectives had the receipt. The only one who bought alcohol that day was Mr. Becker.
01:05:24
He's come to you days before saying, you need to know that my wife is an alcoholic.
01:05:30
She doesn't handle booze well. And yet here on this evening dinner, he's provided the wine.
01:05:36
Does that make sense? That doesn't make sense. Something else that didn't make sense to police was what was found in Hannah's body.
01:05:46
Ambien, the sleeping pill. The pills are generally pink in color. Do you remember a major had come to the police and said Lieutenant Becker had retrieved a bag of pink pills from a desk Prosecutors allege the pills were ambient and Craig had squirreled them away all part of that plan of his
01:06:06
Connect the dots, as we say, your suspicion about retrieving this medicine he left behind at his desk.
01:06:11
How was it used in the murder, as you believe? What we think that happened, he placed that in Hannah's lasagna.
01:06:20
Ah, in the food itself. Yeah, in your food. Prosecutors believe Craig secretly laced his wife's lasagna with Ambien
01:06:27
and made up the story about her taking pills on her own. Next, the husband put her to bed as the theory played out
01:06:35
and placed an empty wine bottle next to her. Everything was going step by step. And those text messages between Hannah and her boyfriend
01:06:45
became an important prosecution point, too. The story went she'd reportedly sent them just minutes before she died
01:06:52
including the one that she effing hated her life. A police photo from that night shows her phone in the living room,
01:06:58
not at hand in her bedroom, because police say Craig sent them, not Hannah. We saw it wasn't possible for her to have written those text messages,
01:07:07
so we came to the fact that it was him who wrote it. So he made a mistake in not picking up the phone?
01:07:14
He made a mistake saying that she could have text message while she's drunk and out of her mind.
01:07:22
The prosecution's picture had snapped into focus. Craig, drugging his wife with the sleeping pills,
01:07:29
rendering her a limp rag doll he could more easily throw out the window. According to a police report,
01:07:38
Craig said he came into the room as Hannah was exiting headfirst. But prosecutors said an examination of the marks on Hannah's body showed,
01:07:46
in fact, her legs went out first. They did recreations from a mock-up window with a stand-in.
01:07:52
They theorize she woke up as Craig pushed her out, hung onto the sill for a few moments, and then fell.
01:07:58
Those marks on the roof, an indication of just how desperately she tried to hold on.
01:08:03
And when he tells you that she went out headfirst, he gets that wrong too. That's wrong. If she had fallen headfirst, all the injuries would be from the top to the bottom.
01:08:13
And everything was from the bottom to the top. Then came a recounting of a disturbing story.
01:08:21
Craig had allegedly been hands-on violent with his wife. Hannah's dad told jurors about getting a frantic call one night from his daughter in Belgium.
01:08:30
And she shouts down the phone, he's trying to kill me, he's trying to kill me. And I said, what are you talking about?
01:08:38
According to a police report, in 2013, the couple was staying at a hotel when Hannah said her husband picked her up and threw her down on the ground multiple times following an argument.
01:08:50
Hannah later told her dad Craig tried to strangle her. Well, you know, Craig did this to me because I'd upset him.
01:08:57
Because she'd had an affair with his friend. But the next day, Hannah recanted her entire story.
01:09:05
She wouldn't press charges, in effect. No, no. Why would she do that? We believe strongly that it's because she realized that if she goes through with it, his career is over.
01:09:18
And that's what prosecutors and Hannah's dad say was Craig's motive to do away with his wife.
01:09:24
There's no reason for him to kill Hannah unless he felt that she was a threat. A threat to him that she would go back to the military and reinstate her claim about the strangulation event.
01:09:39
And that would be the finish for him, isn't it? That would be the end of his career.
01:09:42
As the prosecution wrapped up, Inspector Klosen felt confident about the case. There was no doubt.
01:09:51
And my colleague said regularly, he did it. He did it? He did it, because all what he said, nothing was matching.
01:10:01
But the defense was about to argue, not so fast. They'd built their own window recreation, which they believed proved that Lieutenant Craig Becker was innocent.
01:10:12
After 10 days of prosecution witnesses, the defense attorneys came out swinging.
01:10:31
They argued there was no motive for Craig to kill Hannah, and there was no indication that any type of struggle occurred in their apartment.
01:10:38
There is no hard evidence that would establish in any way, shape or form beyond any reasonable doubt that Lieutenant Becker committed this crime.
01:10:50
David Sheldon is currently one of Craig's attorneys, though he didn't argue the original case.
01:10:56
He insists Craig is innocent. First off, he says the investigation by Belgian authorities was severely flawed and therefore can't be trusted.
01:11:06
start with the police failing to seal the apartment or collect physical evidence the night hannah died
01:11:13
they don't seize her cell phone they don't seize her ipad they don't seize my client's
01:11:20
evidence they don't seize the wine bottle there is wine actually in the glass as for the ambient inner system the defense said that was consistent with craig's story of seeing
01:11:33
his wife take some pills that night. He sees her take a pill from a pill bottle. Does he know what
01:11:40
it is? No. And he gave those pills to the police immediately as they were taking her away. If you
01:11:47
remember, the pills were sent to the hospital. But after Hannah's death was at first ruled a suicide,
01:11:53
the pills were thrown away. The defense also challenged the blood results that showed no alcohol in
01:12:00
system. One reason, the blood was stored in a refrigerator where employees kept their lunch.
01:12:06
Craig's sister was in the courtroom. They don't know what the chain of evidence was. Could have
01:12:10
been tampered with. It could be the wrong sample, for all they know. The defense also denied that
01:12:16
Craig had ever been emotionally or physically abusive and disputed the testimony about what
01:12:21
happened in that hotel room. Has he assaulted her? No. No, he did not. He cooperated with the
01:12:27
authorities. And they say there never was a master plan for him to kill Hannah and then cover it up
01:12:33
by faking a suicide. Take that bag of pink pills Craig retrieved from an old desk. His attorney
01:12:41
said they weren't sleeping pills, but actually Ritalin, a medication prescribed to the lieutenant
01:12:47
to help him concentrate. Police say they never did find the bag. He's getting ready to go to
01:12:53
graduate school. So it's not beyond the ken to suggest that, yeah, I want my, you know, ADHD
01:13:00
pills that I left in this desk. And something else. The attorney says there's a plausible
01:13:08
reason why Craig went to the police in the days before his wife's death. He needed legal guidance.
01:13:15
Because he was in a foreign country, Craig wanted to know if he could stop Hannah's new boyfriend
01:13:20
from coming into their apartment. What he did was he went to the police and he said,
01:13:25
hey, what are my rights? We're separating and I need to know, do I have the right to be able to dictate
01:13:33
who's in that house and who's not in that house? And to help prove its case, the defense brought on a number of its own witnesses,
01:13:41
including someone you've met. Her college friend who took those wedding photos, now a witness for the defense.
01:13:48
She had been your friend. Right. And yet you were in a way being asked to choose.
01:13:53
Choose between Hannah and Craig. I don't really feel like I have to choose because, you know, I wasn't there.
01:13:59
I don't know what happened, but I think Hannah would want the truth to be told. And Elizabeth says that's what she did.
01:14:06
She told jurors the story of her friend becoming very drunk during that flight they shared.
01:14:11
She just didn't believe Craig was a killer. Prosecution story seems to be, well, he crushed some sleeping potion,
01:14:17
and got her groggy and then threw her out the window. Can you see Craig doing that No But that what you have to believe if he the killer I just can see him doing that Craig sister agreed She could not believe the prosecution was accusing him of being a calculated
01:14:37
killer. In the trial, they tried to paint my brother as a monster. My brother's not a monster.
01:14:43
He's quiet and he's reserved, but he's not a monster. The defense argued despite Hannah's
01:14:50
relationship with a new boyfriend, she actually still loved her husband and hadn't moved on from
01:14:56
their relationship at all. In fact, she wanted to get back together. She didn't want to be alone.
01:15:02
And I think that when she faced things, she saw her life not with the person that she truly loved,
01:15:09
Craig Becker, and that crushed her. The defense version of that night has Hannah waking up in her
01:15:16
bedroom and hearing her husband in another room talking on the phone with a woman named Jackie.
01:15:22
Someone Hannah had suspected even before they separated of having had a long-term affair with
01:15:27
her husband. Was it sexual? Were they sleeping together? I don't know when they started an
01:15:31
intimate relationship together. I think it was around this time. And the defense says there was
01:15:38
another factor that played into Hannah's death. She was abusing a substance called tramadol,
01:15:44
a painkiller and opiate. Lab analysis of her hair showed she'd regularly used it in her final months.
01:15:51
I think the fact that she was using prescription drugs inappropriately is indicator enough of mental health issues.
01:16:02
That was a key point for the defense. Hannah's mental state and depression. Their theory,
01:16:08
she impulsively approached the window, started crawling out, but then changed her mind.
01:16:15
She tried to hold on, and at that point I think that she realized, oh my God, what did I do?
01:16:22
Maybe she didn't want to die. While Craig initially said he saw Hannah fall out of the window headfirst,
01:16:29
the defense acknowledged at trial it was possible that Hannah fell feet first, but she wasn't pushed.
01:16:35
An eyewitness testified she saw Hannah fall. A nurse who worked across the street heard a scream, looked up, and saw a woman briefly hanging from the window.
01:16:44
What the eyewitness saw is that she was pedaling her feet like you would pedal a bike trying to get up To test the nurse observation the defense hired Vojko Banjak a forensic scientist with
01:17:01
30 years experience in studying what happens to the human body in motion. He built his own scale model mock-up of the window and used a woman similar in height and
01:17:11
weight to Hannah to demonstrate several scenarios. She most likely, for whatever reason, changed her mind, attempted to, as the eyewitness said, bicycle pedal her way back through the window into the apartment.
01:17:32
The defense argued that those pedaling motions could have created these marks on the roof, just as the test subject had done.
01:17:38
And in this recreation, Banjak says it would have been difficult for Craig to push his unconscious wife out the window
01:17:46
because her limp body would have simply fallen back into the apartment. It would be almost impossible for a perpetrator like Lieutenant Becker,
01:17:57
or any reasonable human being for that matter, to manipulate her body through that window.
01:18:04
Seems counterintuitive, you're saying her body in that instance would end up inside the apartment.
01:18:08
Absolutely. The motion expert also testified the prosecution seemed to want to have it both ways.
01:18:16
If Hannah was knocked out by sleeping pills, how was it that several witnesses, including Ramiro Gonzalez, would say they heard her scream?
01:18:25
If, as the prosecution claims, Lieutenant Becker drugged his wife and she was unconscious,
01:18:34
I do not know how that scream could happen. A scream is normally associated with a conscious, aware person.
01:18:43
So your scientific opinion, homicide or suicide? By far the most likely suicide.
01:18:53
With that, the defense rested. It was up to a jury made up of higher-ranking officers who would now decide the lieutenant's fate.
01:19:01
If it turns out that he is in fact guilty as charged, what would you say to him?
01:19:08
Just my heart would be broken for his daughter. And for a person that wouldn have deserved that Hannah was really wonderful So I just have to believe it was a terrible accident
01:19:31
The jurors deliberated for two and a half days, then reached a verdict on April 30th, 2022.
01:19:39
Hannah's birthday. The foreman stood up and said, we, the jury, find Craig Becker guilty?
01:19:51
And he was like, yes. Yes, thank you. They had thought that without a reasonable doubt
01:20:03
he had done it. I don't understand how they came to that conclusion. What about you, Inspector?
01:20:10
Do you think it was a good verdict? Is this justice? I'm not the one who can say it is the justice.
01:20:15
It's the result of the investigation we made. The one who can say it's justice, it's the father.
01:20:22
Because somebody of his family is gone. Craig was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
01:20:31
He's being held at the U.S. military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He is appealing the decision.
01:20:42
Isabel, who's now eight years old, is being raised by Craig's family. John hasn't seen his granddaughter in seven years.
01:20:54
As for his mansion, he hopes to finish the renovation by summer 2023, a grand home for his family that no longer exists.
01:21:04
The passion of this project began with family. It was your late wife who found the place.
01:21:08
Yeah. Hannah thought she'd have a lovely life with her baby up in the garage apartment.
01:21:13
Yeah. And now they're both gone. But I'll finish the house like I promised. At the end of the day, he says, no lavish home, no amount of money can take away the pain of losing his only daughter.
01:21:31
That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Friday at 9, 8 central.
01:21:36
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt.
01:21:41
For all of us at NBC News, good night.