00:00:00
Tonight, on Dateline. I'm just a 911. My wife's unconscious. Got a call. Susan had died.
00:00:09
He just said she was acting crazy. She said, I'm gonna kill myself. Brent takes the detective to the garage
00:00:16
and shows him two bottles of antifreeze. It made sense to police that Susan likely killed herself.
00:00:24
Did you, for a minute, believe that Susan could take her own life? Never. We never located anything that pointed to suicide
00:00:34
He was up the elevator, I think it was six minutes What's he doing in six minutes?
00:00:42
You have an opinion that it's a suicide, right? It's not an opinion, it's a fact, but okay
00:00:46
I don't have a murder weapon, I don't have a confession We wanted justice for Susan
00:00:53
And you did not let it go No, we didn't A puzzle for investigators and you to solve.
00:01:01
Was a mysterious death a suicide or something more sinister? I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline.
00:01:17
Here's Josh Mankiewicz with A Cool Desert Morning. On Father's Day, I don't get that phone call from my daughter like I used to.
00:01:37
I loved the way she said, Daddy. It was a tragic loss, one that might have united a family in grief.
00:01:51
Instead, it tore them apart in anger. It was just very cold. And hostile. The lines were drawn and he wasn't backing off.
00:02:01
An open and shut case became a puzzle with a lot of missing pieces. There's a lot of trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
00:02:09
There's a lot of clues in this story, but no easy answers. It seems like it just doesn't add up.
00:02:17
A family pushed back against the criminal justice system. You knew that was going to be the most uphill of uphill battles.
00:02:25
Yes. All we want to know is the truth. And they refuse to give up. You're both grieving parents and you need to let it go.
00:02:33
How many times do you hear that and from how many people? We heard it from everybody that we talked to.
00:02:38
But we're stubborn people. Just a short drive from the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip
00:02:47
is the suburban sprawl of Henderson, Nevada, the state's second biggest city. Henderson was home to psychologist Brent Dennis,
00:02:57
attorney Susan Winters, and their two daughters. Under this roof, they led a privileged, comfortable life.
00:03:06
One that exploded on a cool desert morning in January 2015. Henderson 911, what's the location of your emergency?
00:03:14
My wife is unconscious. On January 3rd, around 6.45 a.m., Brent Dennis wakes up and he calls 911.
00:03:23
Reporter Kate Brickolet covered the story for The Daily Beast. He sounds panicked. He's speaking very quickly.
00:03:29
And he reports that his wife is unconscious and not breathing. Sir, take a deep breath. I need you to take a deep breath.
00:03:35
They're already on their way. I need you to tell me your phone number. This is my number. 702.
00:03:41
That's OK. Are you with your wife now? Yeah, but she's unconscious. He says he has to do something.
00:03:47
He has to give his wife mouth to mouth. And he hands the phone to his oldest daughter.
00:03:52
who then takes over, and she sounds pretty composed given these terrifying circumstances.
00:03:59
Brent's 15-year-old daughter, Allie, took over the call. How long is the ambulance going to be here?
00:04:05
They're already on their way, okay? I need you to get her on the floor, sweetheart, okay?
00:04:08
We're trying, we're trying. She's on the floor, she's on the floor. Okay, is she breathing?
00:04:12
Look at her right now, sweetheart. No, she's not breathing. Okay, listen carefully, I'll tell you how to do chest compression.
00:04:17
My dad's already doing them. Tell him he needs to do it 600 times and count it loud so I can count with him.
00:04:22
Dad, you need to do it 600 times. With Brent still doing chest compressions, paramedics arrived and took over.
00:04:29
It's a chaotic scene, and as they're working to save her life, Brent Dennis begins to share details with them,
00:04:37
saying that he found her in this state just 10 minutes before. He says that his wife had seemed depressed lately and had threatened to kill herself.
00:04:45
Paramedics worked on Susan and were able to get a pulse. She started breathing again, and Brent called Susan's parents, Danny and Avis, in Oklahoma.
00:04:56
He told her father Susan had attempted suicide. Then he took the phone and he handed it to his daughter.
00:05:03
He said, here, talk to her. And I said, Allie, is your mother awake? And she said, no.
00:05:08
And then she said, wait a minute. She said, one of her fingers is moving. We've got to go.
00:05:13
I didn't want to believe any of it. I just knew it was bad, but I was like him, thinking,
00:05:19
okay, they will get her to the hospital, and we can get out there and see her, and it'll be okay.
00:05:25
And we waited, and waited for another call. Waiting was torture, so Danny and Avis booked a private plane so they could be with their daughter as soon as possible.
00:05:37
Susan had been rushed to an ER with a steady pulse. The bad news, a CAT scan showed swelling around her brain.
00:05:46
The prognosis was bleak. Brent called Susan's parents again. We were on our way to that airport.
00:05:54
We were at the gate to turn in and he called He said don come out I call back I wanted to go and Danny wanted to go We felt like we should but it was a nightmare
00:06:10
Brent asked them not to come to Nevada right away, to wait for a medical update.
00:06:16
It was a tough decision, but Danny and Avis agreed. Waiting would also give their son a chance to join them on a later flight.
00:06:23
So they returned home, hoping for good news, but also terrified of what they'd hear next.
00:06:31
That even if she survived, Susan's life and theirs would never be the same. This was a marriage that started with so much love.
00:06:45
When we come back. She was head over heels in love with him. He was head over heels in love with her, too.
00:06:51
But sadly, if this was a suicide attempt, it wasn't Susan's first. She thought about it enough to go in the car, close the garage door and turn on the engine.
00:07:03
And then she didn't go through with it. Yeah. Susan Winters had been in the hospital for most of the morning, husband Brent by her side.
00:07:26
Brent had given Susan's parents in Oklahoma a disturbing report. Susan hardly looked like herself.
00:07:34
She was bloated. and on life support. He said, you just don't want to see her like this.
00:07:41
He was painting a picture for me, and that was not my Susan. Their Susan was a bundle of energy who embraced life with everything she had.
00:07:55
She'd been the apple of her parents' eyes from the day she was born. She tried to please everybody.
00:08:02
She wanted to do well in school. a wonderful daughter. If she couldn't do her best, she wasn't ever satisfied.
00:08:11
Big Brother Chris, a gifted athlete, says Susan's best was really good. She wanted to go and do anything any of the older kids were doing.
00:08:21
She was going to be right there doing it. She had no fear. She was the tomboy kid sister who was tagging along?
00:08:28
Pretty much. She was a lot of fun to have around. Fiercely competitive, Susan was an honor student, homecoming queen, and star of her school's track, basketball, and softball teams.
00:08:41
Kelly Sneed was both teammate and best friend. She would come into a room and just brighten it up, and she was loud and boisterous, and she was smart, and she was beautiful.
00:08:55
In eighth grade, Susan had her eye on another bright star, Brent Dennis, quarterback of
00:09:02
her school's state champion football team. He was more than a jock. He was handsome.
00:09:09
He was smart and almost invincible. You know, I mean, everybody just swooned over him.
00:09:15
He was amazing. Brent, the big man on campus, was 18. Susan was just 14. It wasn't going to happen.
00:09:25
A girl can dream. She had a very big crush on him, and she told me one time, I'm going to marry that guy someday.
00:09:36
After graduation, Susan and Brent went their separate ways. She became a lawyer and settled in Las Vegas.
00:09:43
He was a psychologist in San Diego. By the early 90s, they were both divorced and available.
00:09:50
Susan's sister-in-law, Julie, took it from there. I called his dad and said I was part of the reunion committee and I needed Brent's number.
00:09:58
So I gave him Susan's number and they talked for a couple of weeks. And then she flew into San Diego to meet him.
00:10:05
Once they reconnected, she was head over heels in love with him. I think he was head over heels in love with her too.
00:10:13
He was very compassionate and loving. They got married in 1995, settled in Henderson,
00:10:20
and had two daughters, Allie and Danny. Money wasn't really an issue for them. Susan and Brent were professionals and doing well.
00:10:30
And Susan's family provided a very comfortable security blanket. Hi, how are you doing today?
00:10:36
They own more than 100 restaurant franchises, including dozens of Sonic drive-ins.
00:10:42
How are you doing? Susan received monthly profits from four of them. It was a charmed life.
00:10:50
except it didn't last. In 2012, after more than 15 years of marriage, Brent and Susan separated.
00:10:59
No one seemed to know why. What was not working in that marriage? Or what did she tell you?
00:11:05
She didn't tell us anything about the marriage. She just said it's not working, but she still loved him and she wanted the marriage to work.
00:11:15
They agreed to share custody of their daughters, 13 and 10 years old at the time. One week when the girls were staying with their dad,
00:11:25
Julie went to visit Susan, who was alone in the house and in very bad shape. And I still have goosebumps. I remember walking in. She was not very receptive,
00:11:36
and the girls were with him, and it just totally flattened her world. Susan tumbled into a deep depression and then one day alone at home she went to
00:11:48
the garage and closed the door and she goes out and starts the car in the garage right and she sitting there and she decides it too cold so she kills the car and walks inside she thought about it enough to go in the car close the garage door and turn on the engine and then she didn go through
00:12:06
with it yeah susan went into therapy and was prescribed medication for depression and anxiety
00:12:14
avis believed a fresh start would be the best thing for her daughter and that meant ending her
00:12:20
marriage. I persuaded her to see an attorney and get divorce papers drafted. She presented them to
00:12:28
Brent. She told me that he said, Susan, why on earth would you file for a divorce? I love you.
00:12:37
She cried saying, I want my life back. I want my husband back. I want my kids. And she did get them
00:12:46
back, Susan reconciled with Brent, and the family moved back under one roof. I hoped they would work it out and be okay.
00:12:56
Susan seemed to be getting her life back until that January morning in 2015. After just a few hours in the hospital, Susan was in grave condition and taken off life
00:13:11
support. Not long after that, Brent made one more call to Oklahoma. And he said she's passed and
00:13:20
I'm not sure we said anything else one another. No, we didn't talk anymore. There was nothing to say.
00:13:29
Susan Winters was just 48 years old. Her old teammate and lifelong best friend Kelly was at
00:13:35
work when she heard the terrible news. I got a call from our softball coach and he said that
00:13:44
Susan had died. It still gets to me today, you know, about how much I miss her. And I was lucky
00:13:52
to get to know her and be her friend. A woman's sudden death demanded a response from law
00:14:00
enforcement. This didn't look like a complicated case, but that depends on who's doing the looking.
00:14:09
Coming up. Brent takes the detective to the garage and shows him two bottles of antifreeze.
00:14:15
Susan's death is ruled a suicide, but her family doesn't agree. Nobody would drink that and go
00:14:23
through that two days physical pain that it takes to die from antifreeze. When Dateline continues.
00:14:43
After Susan Winters died, the Henderson Police Department was notified. The call went to Detective Chad Mitchell.
00:14:51
He headed out to the family home to ask some questions. Brent, a psychologist who specialized in treating people in crisis,
00:14:59
gave the detective a psychological profile of his late wife. He tells the police officer that she had been treated for anxiety and depression,
00:15:09
that she takes medication, and that she had threatened to kill herself. Brent described the scene in the house on Susan's last day.
00:15:18
He said that during the day they had been drinking together and that he believed that Susan was mixing her drinks with her anti-anxiety medication.
00:15:27
They had been arguing about the state of their marriage. Things escalated. Brent said Susan flew into a rage and was out of control.
00:15:37
He said it got so bad their daughters left the house to escape the chaos. They walked to a nearby shopping center.
00:15:45
Brent said he picked them up that evening, and when they got home, Susan was asleep.
00:15:50
And then, Brent told the detective, he made an alarming discovery on the family computer.
00:15:56
Internet searches on how to commit suicide by drinking antifreeze. Brent confronts Susan about these internet searches, and she doesn't want to talk about it.
00:16:07
She goes back to sleep, she's snoring, he lets it go. An officer took a picture of the computer screen and that wasn't all.
00:16:16
Brent takes the detective to the garage and shows him two bottles of antifreeze.
00:16:21
Brent says that he found them on the floor of the garage when he got home from the hospital that day.
00:16:26
A history of depression and suicide threats. Two opened bottles of antifreeze in the garage.
00:16:34
And a computer search about how to kill yourself using antifreeze. everything seemed to point in the same direction.
00:16:43
It made sense to police that Susan likely killed herself on January 3rd. There was a history of suicidal threats and this wasn't coming out of nowhere.
00:16:53
I mean, she had a history of serious mental health issues and depression. An autopsy was done the next day.
00:16:59
And when the toxicology came back, it showed Susan did in fact have a lethal amount of antifreeze in her body.
00:17:06
There was also a lethal level of the prescription painkiller oxycodone. The medical examiner ruled her death a suicide, and Henderson PD closed the case.
00:17:16
Except, it wasn't closed for the Winters family. Not even close. Did you, for a minute, believe that Susan could take her own life?
00:17:26
No. Never. And Susan drinking antifreeze? To Susan's father, that seemed ludicrous.
00:17:34
Nobody in her right mind would drink that and go through that two-day physical pain that it takes to die from antifreeze.
00:17:45
You don't just die immediately. Also the Winters had just spent the holiday season with Susan and they say she seemed more like her old self taking care of herself running again And just days before she died Susan seemed to be in a good place and excited about the future
00:18:05
She was happy. She was looking forward to doing things. Susan's friend, Louis Gazda,
00:18:11
also says she was upbeat that holiday season. He'd given Susan a Christmas present she loved.
00:18:18
I had been out at an estate sale and found these records from Elvis. It was a two-album set.
00:18:24
And she loved it? She loved it very much. She was very appreciative. Big Elvis Presley fan.
00:18:29
Her license plate said exactly 3K Graceland. So 3,000 miles to Graceland is what it was.
00:18:36
That's a fan. She was a fan. Lewis says there was no hint of anything being wrong that day,
00:18:43
and they agreed to a lunch date after the holidays. In fact, Susan was planning a lot of things for the coming year,
00:18:50
including joining the family business back in Oklahoma. She was going to come back and be our attorney, our legal counsel.
00:18:58
I had set it up where she was going to fly in, spend a week, you know, each month.
00:19:04
It was going to be an exciting year for Susan's daughters, too. She'd already booked flights to Hawaii for Danny's cheerleading competition.
00:19:13
Ava said she'd go, too, and would make hotel arrangements. I said, we're going to stay in a Hawaiian pink hotel.
00:19:20
She said, that is great, and I'm planning to take Allie to look at colleges. She and I were just talking, talking the things that she had planned and that we were going to do.
00:19:33
This was not somebody who was thinking about the end of her life. No, certainly not.
00:19:39
The winters were locked in. Susan did not, would not take her own life. So then how did she die?
00:19:48
they decided to do everything in their power and their pocketbook to find out. Coming up, Susan's family runs into a brick wall.
00:20:02
We heard it from the police chief. We heard it from the coroner. I tried to make a call to the DA's office. No, you cannot talk to the DA.
00:20:11
Every agency that we talked with responded in that way. The Winters family was in crisis, coping with Susan's death and refusing to accept that she had taken her own life.
00:20:38
filled with equal parts grief and suspicion her parents her brother chris and sister-in-law julie
00:20:46
flew to nevada the day after susan died and met with brent and his daughters in a hotel
00:20:52
the scene that i'm imagining which is one in which brent says she loved the two of you so much
00:20:59
i'm so sorry this happened and he throws his arms around both of you that's just me making it up
00:21:05
That didn't happen. That didn't happen. Nothing. No. He didn't approach us at all.
00:21:12
And Allie was talking and saying, she committed suicide. And I said, Allie, please don't say that.
00:21:19
And she said, why not? It's the truth. And she's hollered it out. And her dad come running over and said, she can say whatever she wants to say.
00:21:28
Brent then pulled Chris to a corner of the room and gave him some awful details about Susan's final hours.
00:21:35
He just said she was drunk and acting crazy. She said, I'm going to kill myself, and if you try to do anything about it, Brent said, well, I'll call the cops.
00:21:46
And she said, if you do anything about it, I'll hit myself in the head with a hammer, and I'll tell the cops you did it.
00:21:52
Did you believe any part of that story? No. None of it. And so there were no hugs, no memories shared about the wife, mother, sister, and daughter who loved them all.
00:22:05
This family was divided in two. The Winters on one side. Brent and his daughters on the other.
00:22:14
The lines were drawn and he wasn't backing off. The Winters weren't backing off either.
00:22:20
When Avis went to the house just five days after Susan died, Brent had already laid out her belongings
00:22:27
and told her friends they could take whatever they liked. Something about him giving away her things was too much for you.
00:22:35
Yes, it was. It was like she was a piece of trash that he could discard at will.
00:22:45
Avis told him what she thought about that. I said, oh, Brent, what happened? You've just killed Susan's spirit.
00:22:55
And he burst out of the bedroom into the kitchen yelling, she's accusing me of murder.
00:23:02
She's accusing me of murder. And I said, Brent, I was just lashing out. And he said, healthy people don't lash out.
00:23:13
So I didn't accuse him of murder. But you thought it. I thought it, but I didn't say it.
00:23:21
She didn't say it to him. But the family was more than willing to say it to anyone in a position of authority who would listen.
00:23:29
So the Winters went to the Henderson Police Department and spoke with the detective who was at the house the day Susan died.
00:23:37
We asked him if he had ever heard that if one spouse dies, immediately suspect the other spouse.
00:23:47
And he said, no, I've never heard that. And I said, you know, it's on all the shows.
00:23:53
Any criminal show you watch, that's the first thing they say. Oh, no, no, no, that's not what.
00:23:59
So. You must be the only police officer in the country never seen any Dateline. Yeah.
00:24:05
The detective said he understood. They were a grieving family looking for answers.
00:24:11
Except, he said, there was no smoking gun, no evidence of foul play. And this case was closed.
00:24:20
Not satisfied, the Winters family reached out to anyone they could think of and heard pretty much the same thing.
00:24:26
We heard it from the police chief in Las Vegas. We heard it from the coroner. We heard it from the investigator.
00:24:35
I tried to make a call to the DA's office there in Vegas. No, you cannot talk to the DA.
00:24:41
Every agency that we talked with responded in that way. Your grieving parents. They'd hit a brick wall.
00:24:50
Not sure where else to turn, they held a family meeting. Law enforcement wasn't responding.
00:24:56
The Winters family was going to have to find answers. on their own. We needed justice for Susan.
00:25:03
That's it. We said, all we want to know is the truth. And Chris said, we start this,
00:25:09
we're going to have to continue and we're going to have to finish it. We cannot stop in midstream.
00:25:17
So they reached out to Jim Perry, a former FBI supervisor who now runs a private investigation firm
00:25:24
in Las Vegas. I had big reservations because it's a difficult case when you have to overturn basically what the Clark County
00:25:34
Coroner and what the Henderson Police Department had ruled. After meeting the Winters family Perry agreed to try and get some answers. My first thought was
00:25:44
that he, Brent Dennis, probably had a girlfriend. The family had that same thought and so days after Susan's funeral Jim Perry began surveillance on
00:25:57
on Brent. He discovered that yes, Brent Dennis was living a secret life, but it wasn't about
00:26:05
another woman. Coming up, so what was Brent's secret? He was up the elevator, I think it was
00:26:14
six minutes before he was rushing back down. We're trying to figure out, okay, what's he doing in six minutes? When Dateline continues.
00:26:27
Susan Winter's parents were heartbroken and outraged. They believed her husband Brent Dennis was literally getting away with murder.
00:26:45
It was terrible that he killed my daughter. It was worse. The son of a bitch was wanting to smear her name also.
00:26:53
Danny was outraged at Brent's claim that Susan's depression cost her her life. But it wasn't the first time there was tension between Brent and Susan's family.
00:27:04
In their eyes, he was arrogant and loved to push their buttons. Brent always needled.
00:27:11
If you said it was light outside, he'd tell you it was dark. Just dang sure put a wedge between mom, dad, Julie and I, and Brent.
00:27:20
Brent had made the arrangements for Susan's funeral in Nevada, but it wasn't what the Winters family wanted.
00:27:27
They decided to do their own memorial back home nine days later. We had a separate celebration of life here in Oklahoma City for Susan.
00:27:37
More than 300 people came. There were speeches and a video tribute, Susan's life in pictures,
00:27:44
with a soundtrack from, of course, Elvis, and his song, Suspicious Minds, ironically about a couple that feels trapped.
00:27:53
We're caught in a trap. I can't walk out. Given the awful tension in Nevada, no one expected to see Brent at the service.
00:28:08
But then he showed up. What's it like to be celebrating the life of your sister while the man you suspect of murdering her is right there in the room.
00:28:17
It was pretty tough. It was very tough. We were just having to eat it. Brent had no idea that back in Las Vegas,
00:28:25
his in-laws had hired private investigator Jim Perry, who'd put Kent Stout and Lindsay Pipkins on the case.
00:28:32
We were following every day for 10 to 12 hours a day. The Winters family thought he probably had a girlfriend.
00:28:42
And so that was one of the things we were focused on, who's he meeting? This was Lindsay's first case.
00:28:48
Kent, who came with an FBI pedigree, is a veteran. Car-to-car surveillance sounds exciting, but frequently it's not that exciting, right?
00:28:59
No, but you've got to be alert all the time. What's the hardest part about doing surveillance on someone when you're a PI?
00:29:05
Boredom, probably. Kent had two missions. Don't get caught. and if Brent was having an affair, be sure to catch him on camera.
00:29:18
He always tried to fight to get in a position to get a picture too. Everybody wants a picture.
00:29:23
It was a balancing act and constantly on Kent's mind as he tailed Brent everywhere he went.
00:29:30
Here he comes right there. That's his car, the Lincoln MKX. This is video of the surveillance as it happened,
00:29:39
shot by a production company and used in a documentary about the case. I got him. I'll stay with the car.
00:29:47
Brent Dennis' routine was mostly ordinary. Even so, Kent took note of every detail.
00:29:54
There he is getting out He out of his car heading to the off Well I don know what he doing Some moments looked a bit suspicious
00:30:06
I don't know if he saw me, but he's staying out of sight right now. He might be hiding something.
00:30:12
And then turned out to be nothing. He pulled the trash can in. Apparently it's garbage day.
00:30:19
The truth was that Brent seemed like a typical working dad. It was take out food every evening.
00:30:27
Sometimes he was taking his kids to extracurricular activities. And there was nothing to suggest he was having an affair.
00:30:37
There's no unidentified women that pop up in that surveillance. No. There was one thing Brent was doing that most working dads don't.
00:30:45
He would regularly go to the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, about a 20-minute drive from his home.
00:30:53
It's an older hotel that's not on this trip. And there's a corridor there along Tropicana that is considered a sex worker corridor.
00:31:03
Oh. So it wasn't uncommon to see women asking men if they wanted company. Is that what Brent was doing there?
00:31:13
Several times, Lindsay followed him inside to find out. He was up the elevator, I think it was six minutes, before he was rushing back down to his car and taking off.
00:31:26
And so then we're trying to figure out, okay, what's he doing in six minutes? So, what do you think is going on at the Orleans?
00:31:34
It's not enough time to meet a girlfriend. It doesn't really seem like enough time to be visiting with a friend.
00:31:41
Or family. And it's happening on multiple occasions. How many times a week? At the bare minimum, it was every other day, and at the most, I was seeing twice a day.
00:31:53
Kent and Lindsay continued their surveillance for months. And while they didn't know what was happening inside that upstairs hotel room,
00:32:01
they did notice something Brent did on every visit. Brent met up with the same guy, sometimes inside, sometimes outside.
00:32:11
That's Brent's car at the side entrance to the Orleans one day. Kent was watching from his car up the block.
00:32:18
Got a guy with dark glasses, dark baseball cap wearing all dark, heading to his van.
00:32:24
He's getting in right now. Who is this guy? That became the big question. Who was he?
00:32:34
And what was Brent doing with him? The answer would blow this family's investigation wide open.
00:32:42
Coming up. Jim Perry tells me if we can get the room number that he's visiting, then I have a source that may be able to tell me whose names are on the room.
00:32:53
Tracking the mystery man. The doors closed and we went up to the 21st floor and they got off and I just followed behind.
00:33:12
While private eyes were surveilling Brent Dennis in Nevada, back in Oklahoma, the family
00:33:20
that had hired them was doing some investigating of their own. Julie and I went to the hospital to get all those records.
00:33:27
We were out there on a mission. In the conference room at their family business, they spent hours poring over police reports,
00:33:35
Susan's financial records, literally thousands of documents. There was a fair amount of detective work that the two of you did, and this is at a time when you're recovering from losing your daughter. How'd you do it?
00:33:52
We wanted justice for Susan. That was the only thing that kept us going. But after six months, they still hadn't made much progress.
00:34:03
We kept finding out that we couldn't get anything that we wanted without subpoenas.
00:34:08
And the only people who could get subpoenas was attorneys. That meant finding a pro, a hired gun, someone like Tony Skrow.
00:34:17
When an entire family shows up in your office, that's pretty compelling. And when the entire family is unanimous in their position that there's no way this was a suicide, that's compelling.
00:34:32
Tony is kind of a renaissance man. He's a guitarist, a restaurant owner. So simple, so good.
00:34:39
And his band sings rock songs in Italian. Those were not the skills the Winters family was looking for.
00:34:47
However, as a criminal defense attorney here in Las Vegas, Tony knows how to waltz through the local justice system without missing a beat.
00:34:57
We defend so many murder cases. We know what the prosecution does to put them together.
00:35:06
Tony typically represents people accused of serious crimes. This case was the opposite.
00:35:13
The Winters family wanted him to build a case against someone who wasn't even charged with a crime.
00:35:19
I at least wanted to provide them that closure that I felt they desperately were seeking.
00:35:27
How many people ended up working on this? This was not just a couple of people. No, the team was probably 10 people deep.
00:35:34
And the Winters family paid the bills. The Winters family paid the bills. They were going to see it through to the end.
00:35:44
They asked Kent and Lindsay to step up the surveillance to find out more about the mystery man
00:35:50
Brent had been meeting at the casino. the PI boss Jim Perry came up with a plan if we can get the room number that he going up and visiting then I have a source that may be able to tell me whose names are on the room
00:36:06
So Lindsay went to the Orleans and waited for Brent. It wasn't a long wait. Brent arrived and entered the casino.
00:36:14
And then the mystery man appeared. He met up with Brent, and they headed to the elevators.
00:36:20
And I got onto the same elevator with them, and they asked me, well, what floor?
00:36:25
And I just glanced and said, oh, same one. And the doors closed and we went up to the 21st floor
00:36:31
and they got off and I just followed behind, got the room number. Mission accomplished.
00:36:40
A little more PI work revealed the name of the man registered in that room, Jeff Crosby.
00:36:46
Doing some more investigation on our part, we saw that Jeff Crosby had already been arrested
00:36:51
for cocaine-related charges, and we found a mugshot. That mugshot confirmed Crosby, a convicted drug dealer,
00:37:01
was the man they'd seen with Brent all those times. It looked like Brent's mystery man was his dealer,
00:37:08
and Brent was seeing a lot of him. We saw him on numerous occasions coming out of the hotel with Jeff Crosby,
00:37:17
getting in Brent's car and then he would go down below the door jam and when he'd come up he'd be
00:37:25
rubbing his nose and sometimes his hair. It sounds like your investigators did a pretty good job of
00:37:30
proving that Brent Dennis had either a cocaine problem or something that looked a lot like it
00:37:35
but that's not really proving that he's a murderer. Correct and we talked about that a lot. We often
00:37:43
said just because he does drugs does not mean he killed anybody. A lot of people with drug problems also have money problems.
00:37:53
So while they were following Brent, they decided to follow his money too. The family was also doing that, and one day found evidence that seemed like a major break.
00:38:04
It was a check written on an account only Susan had access to. It was made out for $180,000.
00:38:11
and it looked different from all the others. I gave it to Danny. Danny brought it out here
00:38:17
and they spent a whole day going over those checks. They didn't think the writing was Susan's.
00:38:24
Adding to their suspicions, the check was deposited just days after Susan died. The $180,000 is money that was in an account
00:38:32
that Susan alone controlled. Right. Brent put it in the joint account he'd shared with her
00:38:38
that he alone now controlled. Susan also had a $1 million life insurance policy.
00:38:45
Brent was the beneficiary, and he called in his claim on the first day, in the first hour that the insurance company was open after Susan's death.
00:38:56
God forbid anyone loses their spouse unexpectedly like that. It probably is not going to be on their mind to immediately call and secure life insurance proceeds.
00:39:08
We all saw that as a red flag. There was more. Susan's will also named Brent as the beneficiary of her shares in the family's Sonic restaurants.
00:39:18
For the winners, no way were they going to keep Brent in their lives as a business partner.
00:39:24
So four months after Susan's death, the family bought the shares back. The family buys out Susan's interest from Brent for approximately $700,000.
00:39:36
So they couldn't just expel him, they had to pay him off. They had to pay him off.
00:39:40
We wanted him gone at that point. We didn't want to send any more dividends out there for him to put up his nose.
00:39:48
Add up that $180,000 check, the life insurance, and the Sonic restaurant buyout.
00:39:55
And Brent Dennis banked around $2 million. So this is a case in which Susan Winters literally was worth more to her husband dead than alive.
00:40:05
There's no doubt about it. So there it was, a plausible motive. Of course, motive isn't enough.
00:40:13
The biggest challenge was still to come. Could they prove that authorities were wrong about Susan taking her own life?
00:40:21
And that her murderer was still walking around. A rich man. Coming up, every case is built step by step.
00:40:32
Those steps were getting closer to Brent Dennis. We had concrete evidence that he had lied.
00:40:40
The next step? We believed we could show in a civil courtroom that Brent was responsible for Susan's death.
00:40:47
When Dateline continues. When he agreed to take the Susan Winters case, attorney Tony Scro felt like a first-time Vegas gambler betting against the house.
00:41:10
We believed it was going to be something short and sweet. He expected his wrongful death investigation to end in disappointment for Susan Winter's family.
00:41:21
And he anticipated telling them the medical examiner and the police had been right all along.
00:41:28
So you start off as finders of fact, not trying to prove the family's theory. Exactly.
00:41:34
But pretty quickly, you're finding stuff that actually backs up what the family believed.
00:41:39
It was remarkable to us that everything that we gathered tended to point to Brent Dennis' guilt.
00:41:49
It was time to start playing hardball. Tony filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Brent Dennis on behalf of the family The winners weren looking for money They wanted evidence to help prove their case
00:42:05
We believed we could show in a civil courtroom that Brent was responsible for Susan's death.
00:42:11
The other thing it afforded us an opportunity to do was to collect evidence that we couldn't get informally.
00:42:17
So now we can send subpoenas. We can schedule depositions. Tony had also used his new subpoena powers to get access to Brent's banking records,
00:42:27
and discovered Brent seemed to be living above his means. Just at the Orleans withdrawals on the ATM machine, he was taking out more money than he was getting paid as salary.
00:42:40
The evidence against Brent was this. He seemed to be buying and using illegal drugs.
00:42:46
He had money problems. he'd rushed to collect a million dollar insurance claim and had maybe forged a
00:42:53
check to get a hundred eighty thousand dollars out of Susan's private account Tony thought the DA should know about all that so when he found himself on a
00:43:04
different trial up against his longtime adversary prosecutor Mark DiGiacomo Tony approached him during a break we're in court together often and I just
00:43:14
mentioned to him, I got this interesting case. He says to me, hey, you wouldn't believe what we
00:43:19
found. And he starts telling me a little bit more about it. And then I said something to the effect
00:43:24
of, well, did you get this all records? He said, not yet. Get this all records. It's going to tell
00:43:30
you a lot. Tony agreed. He got a subpoena for Brent's phone records. If I had your phone for
00:43:36
an hour, I would know everything there is to know about you. And again, this is a move the state does
00:43:42
all the time. In every case. In every case. They get the phone and they get the computer.
00:43:48
And so the first thing we were able to procure was the cell phone records. The defense attorney started looking at the evidence the way a prosecutor would.
00:43:58
Now, when you get your cell phone records as a customer, you get, you know, who you called,
00:44:02
who you texted, et cetera. What you don't get unless you ask for it is the second half of the
00:44:08
spreadsheet of the bill, which is your cell tower information. Tony's firm requested that data and assigned one of its attorneys, Jamie Richardson, to
00:44:19
see if it confirmed Brent's version of events. She began with the story Brent had given law enforcement.
00:44:26
So Brent had told the police and on 911 that he had fallen asleep next to Susan at night
00:44:33
and woke up in the morning to find her not breathing. For that story to check out, there should have been no activity on Brent's phone from around 10.30 p.m. until the 911 call Brent made early the next morning.
00:44:50
Instead, when we got the cell phone records, we found that that was not true. According to Brent's cell phone, while Susan's life was slipping away in the wee small hours, Brent was not sleeping in bed next to her.
00:45:05
He was calling and texting drug dealer Jeff Crosby, and then he was driving from his home to the Orleans Hotel.
00:45:15
Now we had concrete evidence that he had lied to the police. It was huge. It was huge.
00:45:24
Next, Tony turned to the family computer where that search for antifreeze and suicide had been done.
00:45:31
We had asked for the production of that computer for months and months, and it was always, you know, you take the dog ate my homework,
00:45:39
and you multiply it by 20, and that's how many excuses we got. Finally, after several months, Brent's lawyers said Tony and his computer expert
00:45:47
could come to their office and inspect the hard drive. Except there was a problem.
00:45:53
They said it has a virus, and I remember walking into the room that the other lawyers had set aside for us.
00:46:02
And the expert picks up one of the hard drives and he says, look at this. And he shows me a hard drive that's smashed like someone had taken a hammer to it.
00:46:12
Deliberately. Deliberately. Of course, it raises another red flag. Why is the computer destroyed?
00:46:18
Tony's team believed Brent had a lot to answer for. And they wanted those answers on the record.
00:46:24
So they subpoenaed Brent for a video deposition. You knew in advance those depositions were going to be maybe not everything, but a lot.
00:46:35
What I fully expected was that he was going to tell me, listen, I messed up. I did go to the Orleans, but it was only to, you know, placate my drug habit.
00:46:46
That's what I expected. What came out the deposition, though, was so much more than that.
00:46:53
You just always read the testimony you're about to give in this case. It should be the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.
00:46:57
Yes. Coming up. You think this is funny? Susan Winters is dead. Do you think this is funny?
00:47:05
Sir. Do you think this is funny? No, I do not. A challenging witness, and Susan's daughter speaks her mind.
00:47:12
It's clearly a suicide. Susan Winter's family had spent more than a year gathering evidence to try to prove her
00:47:32
death was murder and not suicide. Now Susan's husband was finally going to have to answer questions, on video and under
00:47:41
oath, about what happened the night before she died. Just to go over some of the ground rules.
00:47:47
The depositions were held over several months. The set up all was the same. Attorney Tony Skrow and his team on one side of the conference table.
00:47:56
The person being deposed on the other. You were... employed at the Henderson Police Department as a homicide detective, correct?
00:48:03
Yes. In one session, former Henderson detective Chad Mitchell was questioned about his work on the case.
00:48:10
Tony's team wanted to show that police did not investigate Susan's death thoroughly.
00:48:16
The detective acknowledged Susan and Brent's house was never processed as a crime scene,
00:48:21
with no evidence collected. He said he accepted Brent's story, that Susan had taken her own life.
00:48:27
I never had him ruled in as a suspect. This was never considered a criminal investigation.
00:48:35
Their own records show Henderson police spent a total of only 88 minutes on the case that day.
00:48:42
In 88 minutes, there's only so much you're going to be able to observe and see and do.
00:48:48
And that included from the time that they got in their cars to get over to his residence.
00:48:54
Susan and Brent's daughters, Danny and Allie, were witnesses that night, but it wasn't Tony who called them for this deposition.
00:49:01
It was their father. He was counting on their support in the wrongful death suit against him.
00:49:08
Were you surprised to see your granddaughters show up there? Brent had added them to his witness list?
00:49:14
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were shocked and surprised that he would put them on there and put them through that.
00:49:21
Tony had no choice. he would have to ask Susan and Brent's daughters painful, difficult questions.
00:49:28
14-year-old Danny was soft-spoken and seemed nervous. Even so, she made clear she blamed her grandparents for the accusations against her dad.
00:49:39
Do you criticize your grandparents for wanting to understand what happened the day that she passed away?
00:49:47
Yes. Why? Because they didn't, my mom and her parents didn't have a good relationship.
00:49:54
And I feel like if they did, they would have known that she was depressed and suicidal.
00:50:00
16-year-old Allie felt the same and was her father's fiercest defender. Are you here because you want to protect your dad?
00:50:10
Yes, because this is all unnecessary. What do you think is going on in this case?
00:50:16
Why are we here? Why are we talking about any lawsuit? Because my grandparents think my dad's a murderer.
00:50:23
Allie softened when she spoke of her mother, at one point describing how good Susan looked in the months before she died.
00:50:31
She just always had a natural glow to her. She just knew what was like, what worked for her body.
00:50:36
I mean, she ran all the time. Despite that, Allie was firm in her belief that Susan killed herself,
00:50:44
and she wouldn't consider any other explanation. My question is about whether or not you would want to know if anything inappropriate happened during the time that your mom passed away.
00:50:57
No, because it's clearly a suicide. The moment Susan's family had been waiting for finally arrived.
00:51:05
Brent Dennis sat down to face Tony's questions. Avis and Danny flew to Las Vegas and sat in Tony's office to watch a live feed of the confrontation.
00:51:15
Do you need anything else? Pad, paper, you got your documents? I got all. Okay. Tony asked Brent about his drug use.
00:51:24
Did you engage in the use of controlled substances at or around the time of your wife's death?
00:51:30
Occasionally. What is your controlled substance of choice? Not sure I have one. Tony asked Brent about purchasing drugs from Jeff Crosby.
00:51:41
Could you have seen him every day? Possible. Did you buy cocaine from him? Possibly.
00:51:48
Brent acknowledged Susan knew about his drug use and even threatened to expose it.
00:51:55
When she made threats, they were very general. I'm going to turn you in. I'm going to call the police.
00:52:02
I'll tell your parents. Tony pressed Brent to admit he was afraid Susan might make good on her threat
00:52:08
and ruin him by causing his psychologist's license to be revoked. Brent appeared unconcerned.
00:52:17
You knew that if Susan's threat manifested in actually her doing something, your license was going to be at risk, right?
00:52:27
Hypothetically. Tony asked Brent why he deposited that $180,000 check days after Susan died.
00:52:35
Brent claimed the bulk of it was for a down payment on a new home for the two of them.
00:52:40
Did you have a home picked out that you were going to buy? I did not. Did she? I wasn't aware.
00:52:49
Had you looked at a single home? I can't recall. It was a mess, stuttering and stammering.
00:52:58
And, you know, once somebody is doing that, it becomes much easier to sort of start picking apart their story.
00:53:05
She did not write that check, did she? Well, she wrote it with me. You guys trace over each other's words? What does that even mean?
00:53:16
She wrote part of it and I wrote part. So she wrote our names in, the best I can recall.
00:53:24
And that was typical fashion where she would sign the check and make it out to me and her.
00:53:33
Do you have a specific recollection of you and Susan co-authoring a single check?
00:53:39
I can't say with certainty. Brent's explanations seemed to be crumbling, as did his composure.
00:53:47
Later came a lunch break, and that's when Brent, alone in the room, and apparently unaware
00:53:54
cameras were still recording picked up a copy of that check for a closer look He looking at the check When the deposition resumed Tony turned up the heat
00:54:06
Over the lunch break, did you look at the exhibit? No. You understand that even though we say off the record,
00:54:13
there's still a video feed that is continuously recording you? Okay. Okay, let me ask you again.
00:54:20
Okay. Now that you're aware that there's video that continues to record, is it still your testimony that you didn't look at the exhibit over the break?
00:54:26
I may have. Do you think this is funny? Susan Winters is dead. Do you think this is funny?
00:54:32
Sir. Do you think this is funny? No, I do not. Brent was on the defensive, but he stuck to his story about the events leading up to Susan's death.
00:54:41
He suggested the suicide was as much a shock to him as it was to everyone. He said that in the days just before, his marriage couldn't have been better.
00:54:51
We had a celebratory beer that was symbolic, if you will. Symbolic of? The year to come and the changes that we wanted to make in relationship to our family and the girls and our parenting, buying a home.
00:55:19
He talked about the day before she died. What do you guys do that day? We had sex.
00:55:26
I remember her making a comment of having a trifecta, and it was nice to have a trifecta, basically a three.
00:55:34
That was referenced to three orgasms. That is the thing that convinced all the women in the office
00:55:45
that he was responsible for her death, because it was perceived to be incredibly offensive
00:55:53
and completely lacked any level of empathy. Tony slowly steered the questions back to Brent's drug use
00:56:02
and cornered him with evidence that Brent was still using and still buying from Jeff Crosby.
00:56:10
Brent's attorney quickly spoke up. I want to take another break and give my client some options.
00:56:15
Tony thought Brent Dennis was close to talking himself into a murder charge, so he tried to keep the deposition going.
00:56:23
I'll move on to another topic just so we can get through some other stuff. I know what you're going to do.
00:56:29
No, I think I should talk to him. Okay. Would Brent come back for more, or would he walk away?
00:56:38
Coming up, Susan speaks from beyond the grave. I just don't want to go into my 50s.
00:56:45
with somebody who hates me as much as you do. I love you, so... Really? If you love me,
00:56:53
you've got a really f***ing peculiar way of showing it. When Dateline continues.
00:57:09
Tony Skrow and his team felt certain this bit of legal drama was over for good. I want to take another break and give my client some options.
00:57:19
Brent Dennis did return to answer a few more questions. Mr. Dennis, just a few follow-ups.
00:57:24
Then he stepped away again, and he never came back. I'm not sure Brent did himself any favors in that deposition.
00:57:34
No, he certainly didn't. He still thought he could convince people. Tony has used that phrase, smartest person in the room, and that's what Brent was thinking.
00:57:44
He was making it up as we went, so much so that even his attorney eventually realized that Brent Dennis was in big trouble.
00:57:56
To Tony, Brent was so plainly evasive that he turned himself into a murder suspect.
00:58:02
Now Tony had to convince someone at the Clark County District Attorney's Office of that.
00:58:07
So he turned to Mark DiGiacomo, the prosecutor he'd originally told about the case.
00:58:13
DiGiacomo agreed to a meeting where Tony and his team laid it all out. And DiGiacomo was skeptical.
00:58:21
No case that's ruled a suicide and now 18 months later we're going to revive as a homicide
00:58:27
is anything you can consider a slime dunk. DiGiacomo knew he couldn't just take Tony's word for it.
00:58:35
They have an interest here, right? They're on the side of the family and, you know, anything that they do potentially is
00:58:41
tainted by a bias by them. Still, DiGiacomo agreed to investigate Brent Dennis for Susan's murder.
00:58:49
Most my cases, the easiest part about it is a crime was committed. And the hard part is who did
00:58:57
it. This case was different in the sense that there wasn't any doubt who did it if I could
00:59:03
establish a crime was committed. What can a prosecutor do that Tony couldn't? When a law
00:59:09
enforcement officer walks up and says, hey, I'm investigating this, people are more willing to
00:59:14
have a conversation. They trust them a little bit more. And we also have the power of search warrants.
00:59:19
We can request things that can only be gotten by order of a court. And so in the summer of 2016, more than a year after Susan's death, the Winters family finally
00:59:33
got what they wanted. The Giacomo and a detective from the Henderson PD started the Susan Winters
00:59:39
case again from scratch. The very first thing we wanted to do was interview people who knew Brent,
00:59:47
who knew Susan. What picture emerged of Brent and Susan's relationship in that marriage?
00:59:53
It was very dysfunctional Suspicious Minds by Elvis Presley was the ringtone on Susan phone whenever there was a call from Brent phone
01:00:06
And when Prosecutor DiGiacomo obtained a search warrant for Brent's actual cell phone, he
01:00:11
found recordings of Susan Winters talking about her marriage from beyond the grave.
01:00:17
I just don't want to go into my 50s with somebody who hates me as much as you do.
01:00:25
I love you, so... Really? If you love me, you've got a really f***ing peculiar way of showing it.
01:00:33
Apparently, Brent often recorded fights he had with Susan. I don't want anything else to do with you.
01:00:38
So what does it mean? I want a divorce. De Giacomo also found texts Susan had sent to some friends in October of 2014.
01:00:48
saying Brent had acknowledged he had a cocaine habit. I thought I knew the telltale signs of coke use, but maybe not, she wrote.
01:00:57
Just after the couple rang in the new year, their unraveling accelerated. It is fairly clear that her and Brent's relationship is at the breaking point.
01:01:09
In fact, another friend told DiGiacomo that just days before her death, Susan said she was thinking about dating other men.
01:01:17
And there was one piece of evidence that sealed the deal for DiGiacomo. Remember that $180,000 check?
01:01:25
The one Brent deposited so soon after Susan's death? A friend of Brent's shared a conversation they'd had about it.
01:01:34
Hey, the reason I did that, I took that money, is I knew that her parents would accuse me of murder.
01:01:41
But what his friend didn't know is that at 9 o'clock the night before, when Susan's allegedly passed out,
01:01:48
Brent Dennis called the automated line for that bank account to check the balance.
01:01:53
To prosecutors, this felt like proof that would stand up in court. Brent was trying to grab Susan's money before he could be accused of murder by her family.
01:02:03
And checking the bank account the night before she died to make sure that check would clear
01:02:07
suggests that he already knew of Susan's approaching death. and that he'd have to act quickly.
01:02:14
Why does he think he needs the $180,000 out of that account? Because her parents are going to freeze it.
01:02:20
It's because he knows she's going to be dead. How does he know she's going to be dead nine hours later?
01:02:24
Because he's going to do it. Right. There's no way he knows she's about to commit suicide.
01:02:29
This guy killed his wife. We've seen it before where people who have had past suicidal ideations
01:02:36
wind up being the victims of a homicide, right? if you're Brent Dennis, it's the perfect cover to kill her.
01:02:43
And the motive was money. Susan's money. Her family's money. Most of which Brent would lose in a divorce.
01:02:52
He knew that she was the gravy train and he had known it for a while. And he had an addiction.
01:02:57
Yes, he did. Which required money. And I'm sorry for him. He should have been stronger.
01:03:04
But we all could be stronger. DiGiacomo was ready to file murder charges against Brent Dennis.
01:03:12
There was just one problem. According to the county medical examiner, Susan's death was still officially a suicide.
01:03:21
And that alone could be reasonable doubt for a jury. Coming up, a medical detective takes a closer look at that suicide ruling.
01:03:33
I started reviewing the medical records and the autopsy, and that was when I knew strange things were afoot.
01:03:55
From the moment they heard the news, the Witters family had tried to convince authorities that Susan would never take her own life.
01:04:02
The response was the same every time. You're grieving parents. And you need to let it go.
01:04:10
But we're stubborn people. At the end of prosecutor Mark DiGiacomo's investigation,
01:04:18
he was finally convinced that Susan Winters died at the hands of her husband, Brent Dennis.
01:04:24
Now, would a jury believe it? To DiGiacomo, it was a hard sell, since Susan's death was still on record as a suicide.
01:04:35
DiGiacomo thought Dr. Stacey Hale could help. She's a toxicologist Tony Skrow's team had consulted with early on.
01:04:42
So I started reviewing the medical records and the autopsy, and that was when I knew strange things were afoot at the Circle K.
01:04:52
Ethylene glycol is one of the main components in antifreeze. But Susan's body had not metabolized it yet, which struck Dr. Hale.
01:05:01
In order to die from ethylene glycol poisoning, your body has to change that ethylene glycol into substances that are ultimately a lot more toxic.
01:05:15
And then those substances deposit crystals in your body. And that's ultimately what you die from.
01:05:24
And that process can sometimes take days. Dr. Hale said the immediate effect of ingesting ethylene glycol is similar to drinking alcohol.
01:05:35
If you consume it, you're going to get drunk. That seemed consistent with how Brent described Susan that evening.
01:05:43
That by midnight, Susan was drunk and passed out. And of course, there was the antifreeze Brent said he found in the garage.
01:05:51
That all matched up. So then what about the oxycodone Where did that come from She doesn have a prescription for it There not a bottle at the scene and if this is a seemingly suicidal person
01:06:05
then there should have been an empty bottle of oxycodone, or at least pills missing.
01:06:10
And I couldn't account for it. Mark DiGiacomo thought he could, now that he had the records the search warrants had produced.
01:06:19
DiGiacomo had reached out to the different websites, the ones Brent said Susan visited hours before she passed out.
01:06:27
Here is the IP address associated with this computer, and here is the webpage I want to know.
01:06:33
When did somebody connect to your server with this IP address? DiGiacomo learned those antifreeze searches were actually done around midnight,
01:06:43
based on what Brent told police. Susan could not have been on the computer then.
01:06:49
His story was that by midnight, she was already passed out. That's his story. She's already passed out.
01:06:55
That's also what the girls say. Look, we got their devices too. One daughter is on her computer to about midnight, and then her computer shuts off.
01:07:04
And then the only other person awake is Brent Dennis. Then he gets on the internet and realizes,
01:07:11
ooh, it takes two or three days for Manny Freeze to kill somebody. DiGiacomo thought that undermined Brent's plan A.
01:07:19
I think he gets the antifreeze. He puts it in a margarita because she liked to drink.
01:07:24
She drank it. She passes out, and he thinks she's going to be dead. DiGiacomo believes that when Brent Dennis realized after midnight
01:07:33
the antifreeze wasn't going to do the job fast enough, he moved on to plan B. Cell phone records show that Brent texted drug dealer Jeff Crosby
01:07:43
more than 15 times early that morning. At 3.15 a.m., Brent's phone pinged at the Orleans,
01:07:50
where he and Crosby would often meet. It's there for a very short period of time,
01:07:54
and then it drives back to the residence. To DiGiacomo, that explained the oxycodone.
01:08:01
My belief is that he got it that night from Jeff Crosby. DiGiacomo thinks that after Brent brought the oxy home,
01:08:09
he somehow got Susan to ingest it. Then, a few hours later, when Susan would have been severely impaired from the antifreeze and nearing death from the oxycodone, Brent picked up the phone.
01:08:23
I'm just a 911. The prosecutor believes Brent may have called 911 too soon because Susan wasn't dead yet.
01:08:31
The moment she stopped breathing, he made the mistake of calling 911 because they were able to revive her.
01:08:36
So his, I think, fear is, look, she's about to wake up and be able to communicate for a short period of time.
01:08:44
During which time she will say, my husband did this. I didn't take it on my own, at the very least.
01:08:50
That could explain why Brent asked doctors to take Susan off life support, a decision he perhaps made so her family would not see her alive.
01:09:00
When you put that all together, you look at it in totality and say, there is only one answer to the question.
01:09:07
He killed his wife. Even so, that official ruling of suicide was still an obstacle.
01:09:14
So Dr. Hale had a conference call with the medical examiner's office to discuss her findings.
01:09:20
We did a mini toxicology lesson over the phone because medical examiners aren't trained in medical toxicology.
01:09:28
And that's not their fault. I don't do autopsies. Dr. Hale was able to convince the ME's office to change Susan's manner of death from suicide to undetermined.
01:09:42
And with that, there was nothing holding back the prosecutor. So in February 2017, the same Henderson police who'd been accused by Susan's family of failing to investigate the case properly,
01:09:56
pulled Brent Dennis over. and arrested him for murder. We begin at five with the arrest of a psychologist for the murder of his wife.
01:10:09
For this family, it was the result of a two-year fight for justice, an expensive one.
01:10:16
Do you have any idea what this all cost you financially to go down this road? Well, I'm not going to tell you what it cost, but I'm going to tell you this.
01:10:24
It didn't make a damn what it cost. whatever the financial cost, it was worth it.
01:10:29
Yes. So was justice finally at hand? A better question might be, what is justice in this case?
01:10:40
Coming up, Susan's own daughter could be Brent's most powerful defender. You have an opinion that it's a suicide, right?
01:10:50
It's not an opinion. It's a fact, but okay. When Dateline continues, The Winters family could hardly believe it.
01:11:11
Brent Dennis was finally behind bars and awaiting trial for Susan's murder. Good morning.
01:11:18
Thank you. We'll call St. Versus Gregory Brent Dennis 17FA 015. Tell me about seeing Brent in government issue orange and government issued hardware.
01:11:30
It was the visual affirmation that all the work we had done manifested into something positive.
01:11:42
The family was going to see justice now occur on Susan's behalf. Then, less than a week after being charged with murder, Brent was released on bail.
01:11:53
Did you kill your wife? So frustrating. From the moment he got arrested, the elation that we
01:12:00
At that point, it was great, but it was gone when he got bailed. We had to fight for two years, and then they finally decided they could do something,
01:12:10
and they arrested him, and they put him in jail for the weekend, and he got bailed, and he got out.
01:12:15
$250,000 bail. There was nothing Danny and Avis could do except wait. In the meantime, Brent's defense attorney, Richard Schoenfeld,
01:12:26
didn't waste any time in making their position known on camera. Here is an individual that on a daily basis would contemplate suicide, and a good day
01:12:36
was a day where she only thought of it once. Schoenfeld spoke to our NBC Las Vegas affiliate KSNV about the report by a psychologist who
01:12:45
had treated Susan. She was on the 95th percentile for suicide symptoms. The centerpiece of Brent's defense was going to be his wife's mental health.
01:12:57
Prior suicidal thoughts and a prior attempt at suicide are such a big deal for the defense
01:13:02
that those facts alone might have been enough by themselves to create reasonable doubt and result in an acquittal.
01:13:10
We asked NBC News legal analyst Danny Savalas to review the evidence in this case.
01:13:15
He agreed with the prosecutor it was far from open and shut. and he said the most powerful witness for the defense was Brent's oldest daughter, Allie.
01:13:26
Allie has firsthand knowledge. She observed the husband-wife relationship. That's something that
01:13:32
almost no other witness can testify to. And Allie stood by her father and his version of events
01:13:39
from the start. During depositions, she made her position clear. You have an opinion that it's a
01:13:46
suicide, right? It's not an opinion. It's a fact, but okay. Moreover, Allie said her mother had been
01:13:54
unstable for years. It's clear that she wasn't murdered. Because why? Because she was extremely
01:14:02
mentally disabled. She hated herself. She starved herself. She had an eating disorder for multiple
01:14:07
years. She still did. She talked to me about it like two weeks before she even killed herself.
01:14:12
She had a lot of problems that her parents didn't know about. And all those problems led her to kill herself.
01:14:18
Yeah. There's no real direct evidence in this case. There's no testimony, of course, that somebody saw Dennis kill Susan.
01:14:26
The thing is, in this case, the prosecution's circumstantial evidence can be explained by other circumstances.
01:14:34
Danny Savala says Brent's defense attorneys could have a plausible explanation for his actions.
01:14:40
even the lies he told police about the day Susan died. Of course he lied about where he went the night of Susan's death.
01:14:49
He a drug addict and he a psychologist He trying to conceal this because he doesn want to suffer those consequences It doesn mean that he killed Susan Prosecutor Mark DiGiacomo knew he didn have a perfect case
01:15:07
I had small little pieces of circumstantial evidence that would have allowed me to weave
01:15:13
a version of events. But I mean, that that was certainly a weakness in the case. I couldn't
01:15:19
tell you everything that happened. And you can't really put the antifreeze or the oxy in Brent's
01:15:24
hands. I can't put the antifreeze and the oxy in his hands. What I thought I could do was establish
01:15:31
it wasn't in Susan's hands. And of course, there were the people who lived with Susan
01:15:38
and saw her every day. Everybody else in Susan Winner's house was saying suicide. Her husband
01:15:46
and her two daughters. True, but when you look underneath the surface, the two daughters didn't have any real knowledge about what happened.
01:15:56
No, but these are all the people who supposedly know her best and would have known her state of mind.
01:16:02
That's true, too. And look, don't get me wrong. Somebody who's suicidal can still be the victim of a homicide.
01:16:08
You know, that was always sort of our thought, right? Was Susan murdered by her husband?
01:16:14
or had she taken her own life? Maybe police and the medical examiner had it right the first time.
01:16:22
It would be up to a jury to decide. Coming up, after a seven-year fight, an angry family waits for justice.
01:16:33
There ought to be a special place in hell for him and I hope he goes there. And if you need to cut that out,
01:16:39
cut it out. Actually, I'm pretty sure we're going to use that. From the moment Brent Dennis was arrested and charged with murder,
01:17:02
prosecutor Mark DiGiacomo felt ready to go to trial. He was certain Brent would never accept a plea deal.
01:17:09
I'm accusing a mental health professional of killing his wife for the money, and his story is she committed suicide and his daughters believe him.
01:17:19
This guy's never admitting that he did this, not while his two daughters are still alive.
01:17:25
This case would never have reached Giacomo's desk if not for the wealth of the Witters family.
01:17:31
It's a reminder of the role money can play in the justice system. The family that didn't have those resources might be stuck with the result that they had originally.
01:17:41
I think almost certainly would be. There's no doubt about it. STARS had to line up that this particular victim was related to individuals that had the financial wherewithal to be able to do what they did The family had been immersed in all the details of the work done by the PIs and the lawyers they hired
01:18:03
And once the case went to the Clark County District Attorney's Office, all they could do was watch and wait.
01:18:09
And wait. There would be a court date, we would fly out there, and nothing happened.
01:18:15
Yeah, there were a lot of times you'd get on the plane coming back home or get in the truck, driving from the airport back home and just beat on the steering wheel or whatever just to get the frustration and emotion out.
01:18:29
Danny, I know at one point you called the prosecutor and Tony and said, we've got to speed this up because I want this to happen while I'm still on this earth.
01:18:41
That's right. Who knows how long you got to live. As a father, your job is to protect your children.
01:18:49
I had to at least see him go to jail for what he did do. When COVID hit, courts shut down.
01:18:56
Delays and frustrations mounted. Then, seven years after Susan died, and with a trial date finally on the books,
01:19:06
DiGiacomo got a call from Brent Dennis' lawyer. He said to me, look, if you made me an offer, Mark, what would it look like?
01:19:13
And that sort of opened the door to a conversation just between his defense attorney and I.
01:19:19
Those conversations led to a meeting that included attorneys, the Witters family, and Brent Dennis to discuss a possible plea deal.
01:19:29
It was like something out of a comedy. We'd go in and we'd sit down and they would throw something on the table.
01:19:35
it was like we were kind of auctioning Susan's life off. What would we accept? What would we accept for Susan's life?
01:19:43
Ultimately, the deal was this. Instead of facing a jury, Brent Dennis took an Alford plea to manslaughter.
01:19:52
Officially, it's a guilty plea, but it doesn't require the accused to admit to actually committing the crime.
01:19:59
How'd you feel about the Alford plea? I'd never heard of it. It was a slap in the face.
01:20:04
He didn't have to admit anything. It left a very bitter taste in my mouth after the seven years.
01:20:13
The two biggest victims in this case, other than Susan, were Allie and Danny. I knew that a trial was going to be vicious for them. The only thing that was going to help is if we resolved the case.
01:20:25
Sentencing came in May 2022. Danny, Avis, Chris and Julie sat on one side of the courtroom.
01:20:32
Allie and Danny on the other. Their dad's defense attorney spoke for them. We decided as a family to take this path for the sole reason that it is time for us as a family to put this behind us and not because we believed for a second that he had any involvement in our mother death The judge sentenced Brent Dennis to a prison term of three to ten years
01:20:58
Officially a win for the Winters family. But it didn't feel like one. For Danny, prison is too good for Brent Dennis.
01:21:08
For me to think about my daughter laying there and going through that, with the antifreeze,
01:21:13
the oxycodone, everything else he put in their body, there ought to be a special place in hell for him,
01:21:19
and I hope he goes there. And if you need to cut that out, cut it out. Actually, I'm pretty sure we're going to use that.
01:21:26
Okay. The sentencing was the first time in seven years that Danny and Avis were in the same room
01:21:33
with the granddaughters they adore and with whom they now have no contact at all.
01:21:40
Danny has told me many times when I am depressed about not getting to see them anymore.
01:21:46
He says, Avis, we had the best time with them when they were growing up. Do the two of you think there's going to be a day when you will have that relationship with your granddaughters the way you used to?
01:21:56
I pray for that every day. And I believe it can happen. But the time is drawing short for us.
01:22:06
Anything you want to say to them? Ellie and Danny, we love you. In 2023, a civil court ruled in favor of the Winters family in their wrongful death suit,
01:22:19
naming Brent Dennis as Susan's killer. The judge awarded the family just more than $1 million.
01:22:27
Dateline requested interviews with Brent Dennis, his daughters, and his attorneys,
01:22:33
as well as the Henderson Police Department. They all declined. All that's left for the winters now are the reminders of a beautiful life taken too soon.
01:22:47
Susan's childhood scrapbook. She wanted to save all the things that went on. Every place we went, she would find a souvenir t-shirt and keep it.
01:23:02
A quilt of Susan's shirts. memories of the daughter they loved and still long for.
01:23:13
What do you miss most about her? Her laughter, her wit. I still want my daughter back.
01:23:21
There's not one thing I don't miss about her. I just miss her spirit. Nothing was ever too big for her.
01:23:34
That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.