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I'm Lester Holt. Tonight, on Dateline. We went home and had cocktails, more cocktails.
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And got kind of carried away. Yeah. Dramatic new developments in a deadly mystery that begins with cocktails and ends with a twist.
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They started drinking. One of them wound up dead. He shot himself. I don't get it. He shot himself.
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I remember walking out and just saying, what are you doing? It came down as a possible suicide.
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Red flag went up immediately in my mind. Things didn't make sense. I never believed that my brother, with his daughter 20 steps away sleeping, would take
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a gun and shoot himself in the eye. I keyed down that gun that was in his right hand.
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It looked like it was placed there. It just kind of made the hair back my neck stand on it.
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Why didn't I do anything to stop it? It was disbelief, shock, anger. We just asked why.
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Why? It wasn't about the truth. It was about them winning a case. And we paid the price for it.
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Here's Keith Morrison with In the Light of Day. Some people blamed the booze, that is, when it was all over in the hard light of a winter morning here in Phoenix, Arizona.
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It was extremely intoxicated. When the body bag made its way to the morgue, and the folks from CSI craned their necks around fallen furniture and telltale pools of blood,
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and the survivors struggled to explain... I'm trying to remember it as best I can.
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that it must have been the booze with a gun. A pistol. A semi-automatic handgun.
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Where did that come from? With that email. The one that preceded so much vodka. And I was like, why are you trying to worry about this now?
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Like, there's nothing you can do. Something had to be going on that no one understood.
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This doesn't make sense. My brother would never do this. When you start putting all the pieces together, you only get one explanation, and that's murder.
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Well, to understand any of it, this is as good a place as any to begin. San Clemente, California.
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Time? The morning of the previous day, a Wednesday, December 29, 2010. A man named Rob Fisher, ex-police officer turned attorney with a thriving practice in family law,
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got into his car and pointed east to Phoenix. six hours into the desert, where his grandchildren were eager to see their papa.
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It was a short trip just to kind of exchange presents. This, every Christmas, was one of his favorite errands of the year.
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I'm sure every grandfather says this, but, you know, they throw up their hands and scream,
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Papa, and come and run, and almost knock you over. There's nothing quite like that, is there?
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It's pretty wonderful. In fact, Rob Fisher felt like a lucky man again. Didn't for a long time.
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Not after an injury prematurely ended his police career, and certainly not when his then-wife suffered so horribly through her cancer, and then died holding onto his hand.
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But now? He was surrounded by good friends, his career was finally back on track, he was happily remarried, and still cherished the relationship with his former wife's family.
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He was going to come and see the girls and spoil them like he always did. Take them shopping for Christmas.
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This is Rob's one and only stepdaughter, Belinda. They would run, run and jump in his arms.
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Papa, screaming. And it would just brighten his day. You could see that it was just genuine, the love between them.
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The brief Christmas holiday visit from Rob would be, for Belinda, another chance to work through the grief, the searing grief she still felt for the mother lost to cancer.
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So this is something that you still had with Rob afterwards, is that you had your mother.
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And you helped each other work through that loss. It was hard for me, because that was still a connection to my mom.
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Rob was also looking forward to seeing Belinda's husband. What would you call him, his stepson-in-law?
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Lee Rader. Hardly a classic son-in-law relationship. They were only, they're only like a year and a half apart in age.
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Yeah. Did they behave like friends or like father and son? No, not like father and son.
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More like buddies. I don't have any biological children, so that was my family. Rob, like Belinda, loved Lee's outsized personality, his bursting confidence and charisma.
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Loud-talking New Yorker, big salesman, always filled up the room, I'm macho kind of guy.
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This is Lee's sister, Lisa. He was a self-made entrepreneur, no college degree, started several companies.
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Sometimes they did reasonably well, sometimes, often in fact, not so much. But give up? No.
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In fact, even as Rob drove across the desert to Phoenix on that 29th of December,
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Lee Ratter was waiting for news about his latest venture. A big one. The big one.
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Waiting for what he believed could be the best news of his whole business life. It was going to make us boatloads of money.
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And that was where things were when Pop Pop came to visit. Yep. Rob arrived a little after noon.
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Belinda was at work when he picked up the girls and took them shopping for their belated Christmas presents Then the whole family got together for dinner at this restaurant and afterwards went back to the house where happy little girls were tucked into bed
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and Lee poured the nightcaps. Lee was a good host. Huh. Okay? The house was never empty.
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He liked to make sure that you had, you know, that there was beverages there if you wanted to partake.
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Then, well into their evening of liquid refreshment, Lee received an email. A moment you'll want to remember as you hear this story.
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And after, he drank quite a lot. Belinda wine, the men, vodka. Cocktails, more cocktails.
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And got kind of carried away with cocktails. Yeah. A great deal of vodka. They started drinking and the girls went to bed and Robert and my brother stayed up.
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One of them wound up dead. One of them wound up dead. What happened in those boozy, bleary hours between midnight and dawn?
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Well, that's the mystery, isn't it? And a very strange tale it will be. 911, what's your emergency?
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He shot himself. I don't get it. He shot himself. Okay, who shot himself? When we come back...
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An evening of holiday cheer ending in gunfire. It is horrific and numbing to see someone you love lying there dead.
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A tragic scene, and for Belinda, a haunting question. I remember walking out and just not even believing this, just saying, what are you doing?
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It was an early winter morning, December 30th, 2010. Outside, it was very dark. Inside, ice melted in glasses half full of vodka.
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And finally, silence descended on the house. Do you remember going to bed that night?
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I remember saying, I gotta go to bed because I gotta get up early. Any idea how much you had to drink?
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Probably quite a bit of wine. And then a single gunshot. It was Rob who discovered his son-in-law Lee clearly dead, lying on the kitchen floor.
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It is horrific and numbing to see someone you love lying there dead. I remember walking out and looking and just not even believing this, just saying, what are you doing?
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It didn't look real, said Belinda, certainly not in her still inebriated days. You thought they were putting on some sort of act for you?
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I thought it was like a bad joke. I really did. But it wasn't, of course. Not a joke at all.
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Instinct kicked in then. Rob, the cop-turned-attorney, called 911 around 5 a.m. 911, what's your emergency?
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He shot himself. I don't get it. He shot himself. Sergeant Chris Lafko of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office got the call, rushed over there.
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It came down as a shooting call, a shooting victim, a possible suicide. Once inside the house, the sergeant took a good look at the victim.
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There was an entry wound at Lee's eye. His hand was grasping the gun. And there was Rob Fisher, still kneeling beside Lee, still holding the phone he used to call 911.
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Mr. Fisher stood up and said, I'm a retired police officer, I'm a police officer.
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And there was Belinda. She was going, what's going on, what's going on? She was in shock then, or so she said later,
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still perhaps unwilling to get her brain around what happened. I don't think in your worst nightmare,
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you wake up and see someone you love on the floor with blood around them. And then, to be told he shot himself?
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Sure, he seemed a little upset by the news he got in that email the night before,
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but business troubles were nothing new to Lee and Belinda Ratter. They'd been on a financial roller coaster for years.
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Lee was always chasing the next big thing. And even when they suffered, when the car was repossessed,
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or when he couldn't pay the electricity and the power was off for five days, they got along.
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But during the years you were together, the big thing wasn't happening. No. Pretty frustrating, I would think.
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It was frustrating. It was frustrating. And on occasion, Lee turned for financial help to his stepfather-in-law, Rob Fisher.
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In the years I knew him, he went from owning a very successful company to being bankrupt and needing our help.
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That's why Belinda went back to school, got her nursing degree. Her paycheck maintained some stability, while Lee kept trying.
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Did you ever have any regrets about being with Lee? No. We did the roller coaster.
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Did I want him to get a staple job? Hell yes. Everyone who knew Lee was used to the roller coaster,
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but never saw it get Lee down. What did you admire about him? I think his ability to always see the glass half full.
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He was not a negative person. This is Lee's friend and sometimes business associate, Eric Lample.
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I've seen Lee be rich, rich, rich with a new Jaguar. I've seen him in bankruptcy and losing the house.
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And besides that latest thing looked so promising Well we started this company called Senecon We came up with this technology that uses computers to track gaming trends
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This time, Lee was on the verge of scoring big, closing a big deal that would make them both rich.
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Lee was certain it was going to happen in the new year. So that evening, said Rob, Lee was in a very good mood indeed.
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He was enthusiastic. And then it was late. They were already well into their cups. Lee got that email and left the room to make a phone call.
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So this wasn't just a little quickie he was called away for. It was a longer period of time.
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And I remember him coming back and showing me something on his phone, like the email or something, and being upset about it.
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And I was like, there's nothing you can do. It's 11 o'clock at night or whatever it was. Save it for tomorrow.
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And that was it, she said. She didn't give it a lot of thought, because she and Rob were in deep conversation about her late mother.
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Though Rob did notice Lee seemed a little thrown. He did make comments that night that, again, I took a sarcasm.
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In retrospect, I wished I would have paid more attention. About his situation? Yeah.
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But really, what could have been in that email that was so bad he'd decide to kill himself?
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There was probably a lot more pressure on him than he would let on. But that conclusion, reasonable or not, came later with sobriety.
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When the cops arrived that early bloody morning, the rod they encountered was clearly plastered, barely coherent.
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But how's this for a red flag? He acted, said the sergeant, like he didn't even know who was dead.
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He asked me, is that Lee in there, meaning his son-in-law? and it's just in the back of my mind,
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well, why wouldn't you know who this person is? So what was really going on here?
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A detective named Michael Brooks arrived, took one look at two intoxicated adults,
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and suggested a ride to the sheriff's department for a few questions. Something about this did not look right.
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Coming up. And somebody wasn't acting right either, according to investigators. If my spouse was lying on the ground suffering a fatal wound, I'd make every effort to at least look at my spouse.
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She didn't do that. When Dateline continues. It was still early morning when police descended on the house where Lee Radder was shot dead on the kitchen floor.
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and a detective told Belinda he wanted to meet her privately. Didn't give her a choice, actually.
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We're taking you to downtown Phoenix and we need you to drop off your daughters somewhere.
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Detective Michael Brooks. If apparently he has shot himself, why'd you take Belinda down to the station?
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In suicides, in any death investigation, that could be grandma that dies in her bed.
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you're going to talk to the people that are there to find out what happened. There was a reason.
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The arriving officer thought something was off about the way Belinda was reacting.
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I mean, to me, if my spouse was lying on the ground suffering an injury, a fatal wound,
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I'd make every effort to find out, look at, at least look at my spouse. She didn't do that.
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So, there was Belinda being interviewed by the detective. I'm trying to figure out what happened.
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You and me both. I don't know. So, as Detective Michael Brooks, why would Lee have killed himself?
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We've had financial trouble. We always seem to make it through. You know, it's like...
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I just don't get it. I don't get it. We don't own a gun. Which was another question.
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Not only why, but how, when he didn't have a gun. So, to the beginning, asked Detective Brooks.
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Don't leave anything out. We went to dinner at about 7. You came back to the house, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you talked a little bit, and the girls went to sleep.
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What time? About what time did the girls go to sleep? 10.30. And that was about the time Lee got that email about the big business deal he was banking on, said Belinda.
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And then the phone call with his business partner. And he went in the other room and talked to him.
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And Rob and I just sat the table and, you know, just kept talking. And he came back.
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I got up to go to the bathroom and came back. There he was. About what time did this happen?
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The girls went to bed about 10.30. So it was after that. I don't know. Wait. Sometime after 10.30?
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Detective Brooks was baffled. After all that 911 call reporting Lee's death came in at 5 a.m.
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Was Belinda saying she couldn't account for what happened from 10.30 p.m. until 5 the next morning?
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Didn't make sense. Okay, were you intoxicated? Probably. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. We got our first call on this at 5 o'clock in the morning.
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Okay, I don't know. That pretty significant from 10 from the kids going to bed 10 10 to 5 o in the morning
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But was she just confused, the detective wondered? Or was she hiding something? Is there something more to this?
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Do I need to have a lawyer or something? Belinda came out of her fog. She could sense where this was going.
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I'm just trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together Right Okay I didn't kill my husband
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I didn't want him dead I would never do anything like that Was there an accident?
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No That happened? No Nothing I mean Nothing Wouldn't you agree that there's a big difference between
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10.30 at night and 5 o'clock in the morning? Oh, absolutely I mean, you would know.
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But I also know that I didn't tell my husband if that's what this is going, if that's what this is about, then...
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Before sending her home, Detective Brooks kept Belinda in this little room at the sheriff's office for hours.
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I don't know what happened. That business of the time shift bothered him immensely.
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You didn't feel like she was necessarily being straight with you? I didn't want to jump to any conclusions at that point.
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If the detective was suspicious, so was Lee's family back in Buffalo. Or at least they were when Belinda finally called to break the news to them two whole days after Lee died.
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Lee's mom, Liz Radder, described her memory of that phone call. It was New Year's Day.
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Liz, yes, this is Belinda, yes. Lee shot himself. Then in the course of talking to them, we found out that it happened Thursday morning.
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And this was a Saturday afternoon? This was a Saturday night. I said, what took you so long? Why didn't you, you know, I could have gone there immediately.
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Oh, well, the police confiscated our phones. I didn't know your phone number. The call was brief, said Liz Ratter.
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And that's the last thing, probably the last words I heard from her. But that shocking word, suicide, it was a word Lee's family did not buy, not for a minute.
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This doesn't make sense. My brother would never do this. I don't believe that he killed himself
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there's just no way No, thought the family something else must have happened in the house that night
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But what? Coming up why police thought this might just be a major clue I keyed down that gun
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that was in his right hand and it just didn't look right it looked like it was placed there
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The mystery surrounding the untimely death of Lee Radder should not by rights have been so terribly difficult to solve.
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If it wasn't suicide, that is, and within minutes of his arrival, the first officer of the scene strongly doubted that it was.
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I was pretty certain in my mind that this was going to be a homicide investigation.
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So if he was right, it would be the first homicide he'd ever seen in that little Phoenix suburb.
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But why murder and not suicide? I keyed down that gun that was in his right hand, and it just didn't look right.
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It looked like it was placed there. In fact, it looked to him like somebody moved a bunch of things around.
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It just kind of made a hair back my neck stand on it. Which perhaps explains what felt to Belinda like an inquisition down at the sheriff's office.
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They wouldn't let me go to the bathroom. They wouldn't let me have water. I was freezing.
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I asked for a blanket. Nothing. Was Belinda involved? Too soon to say, perhaps. They turned the same focused attention then on Papa, or if you will, Rob Fisher.
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I love to miss the father of my grandchildren, the husband of my stepdaughter, and a friend of me.
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Rob was still in his pajamas and stewing in an alcohol level that was still twice the legal limit.
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When the detective ushered him into the interview room. Can I tell you what happened?
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We were talking like we always do. Everybody looked at him and heard a poppy sound.
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You know? And it's actually a real deal. What condition was he in when you talked to him?
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Well, he was intoxicated. He wasn't fall-down stupid drunk in that I carried on a conversation with him.
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He was answering questions. Rob told the detective he was asleep in the guest room when it happened.
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You heard it pop? You come out of there? And then, what do you see? You know, still to this day difficult to think of.
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of Lee lying there dead. But remember, Lee did not have a gun, nor did Belinda, so where did it come from?
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Sergeant Lafco may have answered that question himself when he looked in Rob's gym bag in the guest room.
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I find the blue nylon duffel bag, and I see a gun holster. An empty holster? Rob admitted it was his gun that killed Lee,
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always took it with him on the road, After all, he was an ex-cop, was fully licensed.
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And your bag was in your room. But how did Rob's unloaded gun get from a holster in the guest room
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into Lee's hand and with bullets in it? Good question. Rob couldn't seem to answer it.
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We were drinking, and I don't remember a lot. We don't. Do you know what I was a lot?
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You know? After a round of questions, they paused, and standard procedure took Rob's clothes for testing.
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And then the detective bored in for answers. It looks like we didn't commit suicide,
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and that's why I'm turning to you to help fill in some of the boys. But some of you have done.
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What do you feel happened? I don't believe I shot you. What was ever seen? You loved it.
00:24:38
We've never fought. We haven't fought. I'm trying to remember it as best I can. I will say I don't remember everything.
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And that's maddening in and of itself. Maddening indeed. So many I don't knows. From both Rob and Belinda that morning.
00:25:00
By the end of the interviews with both Belinda and with Rob, what were you thinking about their stories taken collectively?
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Were there questions that I had? Absolutely. I didn't know what I was dealing with.
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But for all the immediate suspicion, the police investigation didn't seem to go anywhere.
00:25:22
Rob went home to his law practice in California. How much did you beat yourself up that you allowed yourself to take that gun into their home?
00:25:30
It was my normal practice. Do I wish on that one particular trip I wouldn't have?
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Of course. And Belinda went to California, too, with her girls to be with her biological father, Jerry.
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And it was there she tried to explain that they lost their father. We were on my dad and my stepmom's couch.
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We were just like a little powwow circle and just told them that daddy was in heaven.
00:26:00
Sorry. Up in Buffalo, meanwhile, Lee's mother and siblings were suffering from their own brand of agony,
00:26:10
of the mushroom and the dark variety. They kept asking what was going on, and nobody told them anything.
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It was an open investigation. And it remained an open investigation for a very long time.
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Even the coroner maintained an official silence. For months, there was no ruling on the question of suicide or homicide.
00:26:31
And then, half a year after Lee's death, Belinda organized a celebration of life.
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Lee's Buffalo relatives got the invitation and flew out to attend. The tension was palpable.
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Lee's sister, Ann, confronted Belinda. I went up and said, you know, I just, I need answers.
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You were there. You must be able to, you know, just tell me what happened. You'll never know what happened.
00:26:57
Not, I don't know what happened myself, but you'll never know. You'll never know what happened.
00:27:01
We asked Belinda, what did she remember of that conversation? Not what I said. I would never say that.
00:27:08
What I said was, this is not the time or the place to have that kind of discussion.
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And Rob, he was there too, but... Never said a word to us. If my gun killed your son, I would certainly apologize to you.
00:27:22
So, as we say, tension. I don't know if I could ever say anything that would change how they feel.
00:27:29
Lee's family was more frustrated than ever. Seemed like a cover-up to them. Do you have any firm ideas about what happened to your son?
00:27:37
Somebody killed him. Beyond that? There were only two adults in the house besides him.
00:27:45
And if nobody else would tell her what happened, Lee's sister decided. She was going to find the answer herself.
00:27:54
Coming up, Lee's family gets hold of the entire 911 call. Who is this person that shot? Is it a family friend?
00:28:03
He is my daughter-in-law's cousin, I think. Triggering new suspicions about Rob's behavior.
00:28:12
It doesn't make sense to me. I mean, if you've known a guy for 12 years, you certainly knew who it was that was laying there.
00:28:20
When Dateline continues. It was a dark time for Lee Router's family at Buffalo. We're not in Arizona, so all of our angst is almost compounded because we're so far away from it all.
00:28:46
A beloved son and brother gone, no answers to satisfy their deep suspicion. It was Lisa who decided, if nobody else will give us answers, I'll find them myself.
00:28:59
It's just my detectiveness inside of me. How'd you go about doing that? I called the sheriff's office and said I'd like to request a 911 tape.
00:29:07
Got it. Got my CD in the mail. Then the family gathered to listen. And what they heard on that 911 recording seemed very odd indeed.
00:29:19
911, what's your emergency? He shot himself. I don't get it. He shot himself. Okay, who shot himself?
00:29:27
I don't know who he is. He's, like, my wife's cousin. What was that? Rob told the 911 operator and later the police he wasn't sure who the dead man was.
00:29:39
Might have been his wife's cousin? And who is this person that shot him? Is it a family friend?
00:29:45
He is my daughter-in-law's cousin, I think. It doesn't make sense to me. I mean if you known a guy for 12 years you certainly knew who it was that was laying there Do you know how old he is He looks No I don know his age but I looking at him
00:30:05
The family thought they were hearing a cover-up in progress. Some kind of act. The call was disconnected.
00:30:11
Rob called 911 again. Who is this person to you? What? Who is this person to you?
00:30:19
He... Who is he? What's it? And what was also strange? Belinda's voice in the background, to them it seemed far too calm.
00:30:30
Is it a friend or a relative? He is my daughter-in-law's friend. How old is he? How old is he?
00:30:42
Fifty. Fifty? I don't have a frantic wife in the background screaming, oh my God, my husband's dead.
00:30:49
It was heart-wrenching. Heart-wrenching. I think it really kind of solidified our belief that my brother did not commit suicide.
00:31:01
So they went back and forth. Was Belinda covering up for Rob? Was Rob covering for Belinda?
00:31:09
Back at home, Rob did the prudent thing. He hired an attorney. Just to let Maricopa County know that I was willing to cooperate.
00:31:19
In fact, said Rob, his attorney called the police in Arizona to check on the investigation,
00:31:23
but as far as Rob could tell, nobody was interested in talking to him again. We made those types of inquiries multiple times with them.
00:31:32
Oh, but the same was not true for Belinda. They came to my house five, six, seven times.
00:31:39
I wasn't resisting anything. I didn't have what they wanted. I didn't have any answers.
00:31:44
Lee had life insurance. Belinda was the beneficiary. It was blocked for months while the police investigated.
00:31:52
And when the DA summoned Belinda's children to a deposition, she, for a while at least, resisted.
00:31:59
And it wasn't until the harassing got to a point that the district attorney threatened to call child protective services on me
00:32:10
if I didn't have my children forensically deposed that I ended up hiring an attorney.
00:32:15
And that was the only reason. But it wasn't harassment at all, said the sheriff's deputies.
00:32:20
asking questions was just their job. And eventually, they heard Belinda's sobered-up answers
00:32:27
of going to bed by midnight and being woken up by a rob right before his 911 call around 5 in the morning.
00:32:34
I remember getting up, him shaking me, waking me up, and saying, where's Lee, where's Lee?
00:32:43
And I'm thinking, what do you mean? How is it that you didn't hear the shot? I, myself, am a very sound sleeper.
00:32:50
Praise God, my daughters are very sound sleepers because they didn't hear it either.
00:32:54
So if her demeanor seemed off on the 911 call or later to the arriving officer, she said,
00:33:00
remember, at first she thought the bloody scene in the kitchen was a prank. I was thinking that it wasn't real.
00:33:07
Yeah. That it was fake. And not knowing the difference between 10.30 p.m. and 5 a.m. in her first police interview,
00:33:16
well, that she blamed on the wine. and later Belinda told police a timeline that made sense.
00:33:24
Why was your story different later than it was early? I don't think that I was remembering everything that had transpired.
00:33:33
I don't think that I was really thinking of the chronological order of things. And after many sessions with Belinda,
00:33:43
investigators were finally satisfied that she was telling the truth. And then, almost six months after Lee's death, May 2011,
00:33:52
the medical examiner finally issued an autopsy report. In Buffalo, beliefs confirmed.
00:34:00
It was not ruled a suicide, it was ruled a homicide. But in Phoenix? That was completely surprising.
00:34:07
And at Rob's place in California? There's a level of disbelief. It's, you know, how do you, how did that happen kind of thing?
00:34:17
Good question. And here's another one. Why still wasn't anybody arrested? In spite of the medical examiner's ruling that it was homicide, a whole year went by.
00:34:29
Rob thought this might be a case they simply weren't going to pursue. You're looking for it in your life. You're not looking over your shoulder.
00:34:37
Maybe he should have been, or would have been, had he known the questions Belinda was being asked back in Phoenix, Arizona.
00:34:45
They kept saying, well, do you think there was a fight between them that night? Like, no, no way. They wouldn't. They'd never fought.
00:34:52
No, the case wasn't dead at all. The murder suspect, still under the microscope, was Rob Fisher.
00:35:01
Coming up, why Rob? Though he claimed he was nowhere nearly when the gun went off,
00:35:08
evidence seems to tell a different story. There were two glasses with ice in both of those glasses.
00:35:14
tells us that two people are up drinking. Rob Fisher was a busy man in the spring of 2012,
00:35:33
tending to his thriving law practice and his horses in Southern California. Almost a year and a half after Lee Ratter's sudden demise,
00:35:42
Rob had begun to put the whole sad business behind him. Though... In the back of your mind, there's always a part of you that knows there's no resolution to this yet.
00:35:56
But of course Rob did not know what investigators had been saying about him since those very first hours after the shooting
00:36:05
A red flag went up immediately in my mind. Didn't know what the prosecutor was hearing.
00:36:10
That just like Lee's family, detectives believed Rob may have been faking the extent of his drunken confusion.
00:36:16
I don't know who he is. He's like my wife's cousin. I would think you would be able to identify him.
00:36:24
I mean, the wound wasn't that disfiguring that he shouldn't have been able to tell that was his son-in-law.
00:36:30
Investigators also believed that it wasn't the haze of inebriation, but a deliberate lie.
00:36:36
When Rob sat here during his only interview, the one conducted that morning, that he was nowhere near Lee when the gun, Rob's gun, went off in the kitchen.
00:36:45
You mind the front bedroom in the bed? Problem was, cops snapping pictures of the house didn't think the guest bed looked slept in at all.
00:36:55
And when prosecutor Jay Rademacher was shown photos of the kitchen table, looked at him like Rob Fisher was caught in his lie.
00:37:02
There were two glasses, one on the table, one on the kitchen counter. With ice in both of those glasses tells us that two people are up drinking.
00:37:12
and then it was a fine may morning and rob walked out of his house to go to work
00:37:19
i was in the driveway and i saw people running up at me with both sides with guns pointed at me
00:37:26
at first i didn't recognize them as law enforcement i wasn't thinking of law enforcement
00:37:32
and so you you kind of your my split second initial reaction is you know i'm being attacked
00:37:39
And in a way, he was. Not by thugs, by cops. They put me down on the ground and, you know, handcuffed me.
00:37:50
And then Rob Fisher was carted off to jail and extradited right away to Arizona and charged with second-degree murder.
00:37:59
My phone rang. I answered the phone. It was Detective Brooks. He said, I just wanted to tell you that we've arrested Rob Fisher.
00:38:07
that we have Rob Fisher in custody. And that was almost like disbelief, like finally.
00:38:15
Like we waited 490 days from the day of the accident to the day that he was charged.
00:38:21
Finally, some satisfaction for Lee's family in Buffalo. But when word of the arrest raced around Rob's circle of friends,
00:38:29
not a single one of them could believe it. Like fellow attorney Chris Miller, who was appalled, she said.
00:38:36
absolutely the last person in the world. I mean, if you told me these 20 other people did it,
00:38:42
yeah, okay, mm-hmm. But not Rob, not the Rob I know, not our Rob. He didn't do it.
00:38:51
Somebody made a big mistake, said Chris, and as a former sheriff, she ought to know.
00:38:56
Aren't the law enforcement officials and officers just trying to get out the truth here?
00:39:02
Possibly, but even wanting to get out of the truth doesn't prevent you from making mistakes.
00:39:08
I mean, I saw it when I was a sheriff. From his jail cell, Rob found a Phoenix-based defense attorney,
00:39:14
a man named Dwayne Cates. I don't think Robert Fisher should ever have been charged with a crime.
00:39:20
Why not? Based on the evidence. There is absolutely no evidence that he killed the ratter.
00:39:27
Cates got Rob released on half a million dollars bail. But Rob was ordered to stay put in Arizona.
00:39:34
That's where we talked to him as he waited for his trial. And Belinda, she had no idea whether or not she might be charged too.
00:39:43
Were you afraid you were going to be arrested? Oh, sure. You're just in knots all day long.
00:39:49
You just don't know what to expect. And, you know, you think, if they think Rob's capable of this, Rob, like this super good guy,
00:40:00
then they for sure think I'm capable of it. And Belinda had to face the fact that either her husband took his own life or he was murdered by her stepfather.
00:40:12
She found both options. Very hard to believe. But as time went on, she began to think, maybe the prosecutor knew something she didn't.
00:40:24
They wouldn't arrest him if they didn't have some evidence. Right. And I was brought up that we believe the police officers.
00:40:31
we believe that my grandfather was a police officer. Rob was a police officer. Like, they don't just charge people.
00:40:38
He had to have done it. Coming up, at trial, the blood expert's bombshell theory.
00:40:47
Why he says the evidence points to only one conclusion. Mr. Fisher moved Mr. Radder's body to make it look like
00:40:57
Mr. Gratter had a stand-up shot and it fell backwards. When Dateline continues. It was the morning of November 6, 2013, a Wednesday,
00:41:18
when Prosecutor Jay Rademacher rose in the Phoenix courthouse to present his murder case against Rob Fisher.
00:41:25
This case is about a cover. Lee Ratter's family watched from the gallery, hoping, three years after Lee's death, for justice.
00:41:35
Will we ever find out what happened? Truthfully, I don't know. Do I want somebody to pay for his death? Yes.
00:41:43
Most seriously, because he deserved to die. At the defense table, Rob Fisher was confident there was simply no case against him.
00:41:54
I never heard a theory I never heard a motive I never heard anything That was about to change Point number one said the prosecutor Lee Rader death was clearly not a suicide
00:42:09
Lee loved his family, especially his girls. Lee would have never done something like this inside of his home.
00:42:18
Evidence of that? This is Lee's childhood best friend, who told the jury Lee never got depressed about money.
00:42:27
One of his favorite sayings to me that I've tried to be motivated by is just, Adam, you can always make more money.
00:42:35
And there was this. Lee spoke with his business partner, Donovan Durbin, that night.
00:42:41
And Durbin told the jury Lee did not sound suicidal at all. He was happy. He said he had family over.
00:42:49
He was going to go have a couple cocktails and he'd call me tomorrow. The prosecutor called Belinda to the stand, too.
00:42:55
Later, she told us she wanted to testify but was not happy to be a prosecution witness.
00:43:01
She told the jury that though Lee did fret a little about the email he received that night,
00:43:06
he was otherwise the same old Lee. Just like a regular night. Nothing was different.
00:43:13
Not that I recall. So Lee had no reason to take his own life, said the prosecutor.
00:43:22
Now the only possible explanation was that he was murdered. See, the physical evidence, the blood, the trajectory, all of that, that doesn't lie.
00:43:34
Murder explains all of it. His theory? As Lee Radder and Rob Fisher sat at the kitchen table drinking vodka into the wee hours of that morning,
00:43:45
something must have happened. Something that so aroused Rob, he went and got his gun and came back and shot Lee through the right eye,
00:43:52
and then panicked and went about staging the scene. The science doesn't lie. People do.
00:44:00
So, forensics. The arriving officer told the jury how he got suspicious when he saw the gun still wrapped in Lee's dead hand.
00:44:09
To me, it appeared that it was placed in his hand. A very important first discovery, the prosecutor told us.
00:44:16
How is gravity not taking its course from either pulling Lee's body forward or allowing that gun to drop out of his hand?
00:44:24
But it doesn't really work with Robert putting the gun in his hand either, does it?
00:44:28
I mean, why would a cop, for example, put the gun in his hand that way with a thumb through?
00:44:33
This is an ex-cop we're talking about. An ex-cop that's drunk. But, said the prosecutor, not so drunk he wouldn't know who his son-in-law was when he made that 911 call.
00:44:44
That was pure theater. Kevin knew that was Lee on the ground. But he's trying to cover up a murder.
00:44:56
There was more, said the prosecutor. Rob did something any ex-cop should know you don't do.
00:45:02
He disobeyed a direct order. He said, hey, I'm a police officer. I said, okay, just step away.
00:45:08
He says, I'm going to wash my hands. He said, no, don't wash your hands. But Rob washed his hands anyway.
00:45:13
The prosecutor showed the jury the pictures in the scene that seemed to prove Rob lied about being in the guest bedroom asleep when the gun went off.
00:45:21
The neatly made bed. those two glasses in the kitchen with ice still fresh in the wee hours of the morning.
00:45:29
Did you find it odd that there was ice in the glasses at 5.15 in the morning? Yes.
00:45:35
But the key piece of evidence, said the prosecution, was the story told by the blood at the scene.
00:45:41
There was blood on the pants Rob was wearing that, when examined, certainly looked like Rob had been sitting very close to Lee when the gun went off.
00:45:49
and there was blood on the floor, which, said the state, proved Rob was involved.
00:45:56
Mr. Fisher moved Mr. Ratter's body and manipulated the area to make it look like
00:46:06
Mr. Ratter had sustained the shot and it fell backwards. The prosecution's blood spatter expert, Rudy Acosta was his name,
00:46:15
demonstrated how, in his opinion, Lee's body would have slumped forward in the chair
00:46:20
after the gun went off, not backward the way his body was found, meaning Rob must have moved Lee's body.
00:46:29
I believe he didn't. I think he just dragged him out of the ground. What's more, said the expert, as Rob moved around the body,
00:46:36
he left his footprints in Lee's blood. When friends tell me that he obviously stepped in the blood,
00:46:41
where the origin of blood happened, the left foot was in the blood. Obviously said that, so that.
00:46:47
We show there's an interruption of blood, at least more than one. But as we heard the state's case,
00:46:53
we couldn't help but wonder, was some of it guesswork? Did it really amount to proof that Rob shot Lee
00:47:00
or walked around in the blood in order to move Lee's body? We challenged the prosecutor on that.
00:47:06
So those footprints don't show culpability, though. movement. Yeah, but that's all they show, right?
00:47:14
I mean, he may have been surprised by he may have been sitting there, he shoots himself, he gets up,
00:47:20
walks, and, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that he's manipulating the scene
00:47:24
just because his footprints are there. You keep coming up with these possibilities. Well, so do you!
00:47:32
I don't come up with possibilities. I have the physical evidence that supports the state's theory
00:47:38
of this case. So, said the prosecutor, the forensics said murder, even though there's no evidence
00:47:46
of a disagreement between the two of them. There's nothing like that. No. But that wasn't the issue,
00:47:54
said the prosecutor. Hard evidence was. Murder is supported by By the blood evidence, by what the ME testified, about the blood experts, murder is supported by common sense and gravity in this case.
00:48:12
Oh, but of course, it wasn't quite that simple. There was another possibility altogether, as the jury was about to hear.
00:48:20
Coming up, a defense witness reveals that a big business opportunity went up in smoke
00:48:28
before Lee died. Do you tell him no? Yes, I need somebody who has distribution centers worldwide.
00:48:34
So he was told no, but that was not going to happen. And then, testimony that the blood spatter evidence actually makes the case for suicide.
00:48:45
This is a self infected gunshot one. Rob Fisher's attorney, Dwayne Cates, has stood up for a long parade of clients over the years,
00:49:03
many of them guilty as sin. But this case, this was different, said Mr. Cates. Innocent people are the hardest to represent. I don't sleep at night representing innocent people
00:49:15
because losing is not an option. Rob's supporters, including fellow attorney and good friend Chris Miller,
00:49:22
traveled to Phoenix for the trial. What's your expectation of the eventual result here?
00:49:27
I believe that Rob will eventually be found not guilty. Ladies and gentlemen, this case is all about whose finger was on the gun
00:49:38
the night that Lee Ratter died. You know, Rob didn't have any motive to shoot Lee.
00:49:45
And Lee certainly had some reasons to commit suicide. Wait, he did have reasons for suicide?
00:49:53
Yes, said Rob's attorney. This time Lee's life was spinning out of control. There's no money coming in.
00:50:01
And Lee doesn't know what he's going to do. Lee's friends had no idea how bad it was, said Kate.
00:50:07
Tens of thousands in loans and unpaid credit cards, $15,000 owed to the IRS, another $25,000 still owed to a former employer.
00:50:17
No doubt that we, you know, had some financial troubles ahead of us. Belinda was a prosecution witness, remember?
00:50:27
But she told the jury that Lee, with his $100,000 life insurance policy, told her, joking or not, that he was worth more to her dead than alive.
00:50:38
He would say that numerous times over his life. Then, that night, December 29th,
00:50:44
he got that email, remember, and excused himself from the table to take a call from his business partner.
00:50:50
You'll remember that business partner told the prosecutor Lee seemed to be in good spirits at the end of the call.
00:50:55
But he also had to admit that when the conversation started, Lee was not happy. How was he acting?
00:51:03
So he was kind of upset. The jury never got to read the email. No one seems to have a copy.
00:51:09
But Lee showed it to Belinda that night, and she recalled it was bad news about the deal.
00:51:15
Something about he had introduced these two companies together, and now he was kind of being squeezed out of it.
00:51:22
Well, he was frantic. He felt betrayed, but the two companies were trying to cut him out of the deal.
00:51:28
Also said the defense, Lee had been exaggerating for everybody the size and value of the deal.
00:51:35
This man is from the company IGT, with which Lee was hoping to make his multi-million dollar deal of a lifetime.
00:51:43
And he testified he had told Lee prior to that night there wasn't going to be a deal.
00:51:49
Do you tell him no? Yes, I need somebody who has distribution centers worldwide.
00:51:53
So he was told no, but that was not going to happen. He communicated that clearly to Lee,
00:51:59
and Lee was telling everybody that there was this big deal pending. And it was living a lie.
00:52:08
And it was all about to come crashing down on him. Lee Rattersworth more dead than alive.
00:52:13
He knew it. For some reason, he couldn't bring himself to tell his partners and his friends that this big deal wasn't coming.
00:52:22
So, the defense theory of what happened? After all those drinks with Lee, Rob passed out right there at the kitchen table.
00:52:31
His blackout starts as an unblank blackout, meaning he has no memory. It's like nothing writes to the hard drive.
00:52:39
But Lee kept right on drinking. And drunk and discouraged, he went and found the gun he knew Rob always traveled with
00:52:46
and turned it on himself and pulled the trigger. And then, at the sound of the gun, Rob was startled into a confused consciousness
00:52:54
and merely assumed when he spoke with police he must have been in bed. Imagine, you're still drunk.
00:53:02
There's somebody laying on the floor in a puddle of blood with a gun in their hand.
00:53:05
And you look down, you're in your pajamas, you're barefoot, and you're standing in the hall facing away from your bedroom.
00:53:12
Wouldn't your first thought be, geez, I must have been in bed? Later, when he sobered up, said Rob,
00:53:18
he realized he must have been at the table with Lee. What is it about you that should make us think that you aren't the sort of person
00:53:26
who might have been showing Lee the gun, and you're, you know, both five sheets to the wind,
00:53:33
and he went off accidentally and killed him. Whether we're drinking or not, I don't believe that I would ever be so irresponsible
00:53:40
as to introduce a gun into that environment. It goes against my core being. The defense called this doctor,
00:53:49
an expert in alcohol abuse, to explain some of Rob's strange behavior. Around the time of the 911 call Rob blood was three times the legal limit In my opinion to a reasonable degree of medical certainty he was in a blackout Which certainly explained not recognizing Lee said the expert
00:54:08
As for the big deal the state made about Rob washing his hands when the officer told him not to.
00:54:14
Have you ever told a drunk friend to do something? It's kind of like herding cats.
00:54:19
I know, but he's a lawyer and an ex-cop. Right. He's an extremely drunk. lawyer and ex-cop. But what about the forensic evidence, the very heart of the state's case?
00:54:30
The state's expert, remember, told the jury the law of gravity dictated that the gun should have
00:54:35
dropped out of Lee's hand as soon as he fired a bullet into his head. But the defense medical
00:54:41
expert produced statistics showing that guns actually remain in the hands of suicide victims
00:54:47
25 percent of the time. Have you ever seen the gun stay in the hand of somebody that committed
00:54:52
suicide. Yes, sir. In fact, said attorney Cates, it would have been almost impossible for Rob
00:54:57
from where he had to be sitting in the kitchen to shoot Lee and produce the actual route the
00:55:04
bullet followed. Rob would have had to have gone something like this in order to have done it.
00:55:11
Then attorney Cates attacked directly the state's blood spatter expert. You really have no idea what happened to the sheriff.
00:55:22
Other than it was moved. How that chair gets from point A to point B, I don't know.
00:55:27
He would say one thing, and then on cross-examination, I would ask him, and he'd say, well, I really don't know how it happened.
00:55:34
You don't know how Mr. Fisher picked up Mr. Ratter, correct? Yes, it's assumptions. There's too many variables.
00:55:42
After my cross-examine and redirect of that witness, I thought we won the trial.
00:55:48
Still, the confident case wasn't done making his case. He called his own blood spatter expert, too, who looked at the very same evidence and said there was no doubt in his mind the state had it wrong.
00:56:04
Finally, said defense attorney Cates, the case came down to one crucial question.
00:56:09
Whose finger was on the trigger of the gun? Cates put the question to the state's crime analyst.
00:56:16
You at least said you couldn't exclude Mr. Ratter, correct? That's correct. And that's because there were portions of this print that matched portions of Mr. Ratter's print.
00:56:28
There was, yes. And the person whose prints did not match was Rob Fisher. His fingerprints weren't on the gun. His DNA wasn't on the gun.
00:56:38
And Lee's was. They didn't find any fingerprints that matched Rob Fisher anywhere on the gun.
00:56:43
Well, what did that say to you? Lee was the last one to handle the gun. because, said Dwayne Cates, Lee Ratter shot himself.
00:56:53
True? Up to the jurors to decide that. Their turn now. Coming up... Have you reached a verdict?
00:57:03
Yes, we have, ma'am. The news that would rock this traumatized family all over again.
00:57:08
Joy called me, my attorney, and said, Are you sitting down? When Dateline continues.
00:57:17
It was December 2013 when the murder case against Rob Fisher went to the jury. Rob said he felt at peace then, or at least as much as a person could be, given.
00:57:38
Anyway, he knew, he said, he knew that he didn't deserve to be hauled off to the slammer.
00:57:43
I knew I should be going home, and so I was hopeful that the jury would have seen it the same way.
00:57:51
You had to be doing some strategic thinking, too, if this, if that. So what was in your head?
00:57:57
I did feel very confident. No surprise, the prosecutor read the tea leaves rather differently.
00:58:03
I knew when the jury was going back with this case that they had enough information to come to the right conclusion.
00:58:10
and they were going to realize that murder explains all the evidence. Practically everybody thought it would be over soon, including Rob's attorney.
00:58:20
I thought they'd be back in a couple hours with a not guilty verdict. Didn't happen.
00:58:25
The hours ticked by as the jurors apparently wrestled with something. One day became two days.
00:58:33
Two became three. You had to be thinking, what are they talking about back there?
00:58:39
Yeah, exactly. As the debate went on in the jury room, outside Lee's New York family was desperate for a guilty verdict,
00:58:47
so the world would know their lead didn't take his own life, didn't do what the defense said he did.
00:58:53
Lisa Radder. I want to put my head down on my pillow at night saying that was a terrible, terrible thing that happened,
00:59:01
and no, my brother did not commit suicide, that his life was taken by somebody else.
00:59:05
then that will give me closure. And then, it was December 19th. It just happened to be Rob's 53rd birthday.
00:59:18
And word came, there was a verdict. Rob and company hurried to the courthouse, hoping for a birthday present from the jury.
00:59:27
Please be seated. What did you see when they walked in? They didn't look at me, which, as a lawyer, I know is not a good sign.
00:59:35
Have you reached a verdict? Yes, we have, ma'am. We the jury find the defendant as to count one
00:59:40
second-degree murder guilty. Guilty. Rob Fisher stared straight ahead, stunned. In the gallery, Lee's family
00:59:49
and friends quietly sobbed. They had their justice. The prosecutor took his victory in stride Were you surprised at all No A lot of people around the courtroom were Depends on what side of the aisle you sitting on
01:00:06
You were not surprised at all? I wasn't surprised for the fact that I thought we did an excellent job in educating the jury on
01:00:13
the scientific evidence in this case, and that they could only come to one conclusion, and that was murder.
01:00:20
The consequences in a situation such as this are immediate. Rob Fisher was handcuffed and led through a door that led to the county jail.
01:00:32
I want to say it's a little surreal. And then he was installed in a temporary cell while he awaited a sentence of something like 25 years in prison.
01:00:41
The thought of spending the next, in essence, the rest of my life in confinement, very difficult to try to process.
01:00:51
Belinda wasn't in court to hear the verdict, but she certainly did hear about it and was shocked.
01:00:58
I was at the gym and Joy called me, my attorney, and said, are you sitting down?
01:01:05
because, you know, everybody that knew information, they really thought that he was going to be found not guilty.
01:01:15
But she herself, as she told us in a separate interview, didn't know what to think or who to believe.
01:01:22
I didn't, I don't, I'm 100% honest. I don't know what I wanted. I really don't. I don't think that there was a verdict either way that would have been what I wanted.
01:01:39
Certainly wasn't what Dwayne Cates wanted. How had he so misread that jury? I was perplexed.
01:01:46
I had no idea how they could have come to that conclusion, given what the evidence in the case was.
01:01:52
But give up? No. That he could not do, said Rob's attorney. Still, any chance that a new chapter would be added to this story was very remote indeed.
01:02:04
Unless, well, we shall see. Coming up, Dwayne Cates gets a bold idea. It's got to be such a long shot, though.
01:02:16
Absolute long shot. It was Christmas again. In Lee Rader's family, a difficult season,
01:02:35
ever since what happened during that Christmas holiday in 2010. But now, Rob Fisher was a convicted man,
01:02:42
and the New York branch felt the kind of consolation that comes with the belief that justice has been done.
01:02:48
Do you think about him a lot? About Rob Fisher? No. I try not to put him in my mind at all,
01:02:55
because I don't want hate in my system. Out West, Belinda was a mess of contradictions.
01:03:03
And of course she had to tell her daughters. The eldest, then 12, took it hard. Couldn't grasp that her papa had killed her father.
01:03:12
My daughter finally asked me about three days later if the verdict had come back.
01:03:22
And I said yes. and she just looks at me and I just started crying. And right then she knew.
01:03:28
That was her papa. She wants to have a connection with him, but yet she doesn't want to talk to him.
01:03:36
So I think she struggles with that in maybe feeling like she's not being loyal to her dad in some way.
01:03:45
Belinda had been leaning on her father and stepmom for support since Lee died. Her father, Jerry Dupree, is a psychologist.
01:03:53
He loved his son-in-law Lee very much, he told us, but he was convinced the jury got it wrong.
01:04:00
My wife and I are both 30-year clinicians, okay? We knew Lee committed suicide from the get-go.
01:04:08
Really? Yes. What made you think so? Lee was a salesman, and there was a lot of false bravado to that process.
01:04:16
A good man, he cared about Belinda, he cared about his children, but a lot of false pride.
01:04:22
When that collapses, there's nowhere for it to go. Which is exactly what defense attorney Dwayne Cates had argued all along.
01:04:30
An argument that clearly failed to persuade the jury, but Dwayne Cates wasn't ready to say uncle, not him.
01:04:37
So what can you do about it if you believe a jury has reached really the incorrect conclusion
01:04:42
and it's an injustice? What can you do about it? Well, the first thing I do is file a motion for a new trial.
01:04:48
So, as Rob Fisher endured claustrophobia and fought despair in his temporary cell over the Maricopa County Jail,
01:04:56
Cates went to work to try to get the guilty verdict tossed. He had to file his motion 10 days after the trial ended.
01:05:03
He worked around the clock, straight through the holidays. You know, this was my Christmas vacation.
01:05:08
I was writing this motion. Cates based the motion for a new trial on two central complaints.
01:05:14
Number one, an allegation of prosecutorial misconduct, accusing the other side of using unfair language during the trial
01:05:22
and unfair tactics even before it started. They played hard with the discovery, getting us discovery,
01:05:29
getting us notes after I do the interview instead of before the interview. It could have been more forthcoming, is that what you're saying?
01:05:35
You know, the practice of law doesn't have to be as hard as it was in this case.
01:05:39
So there was that. A common complaint, though, which frankly doesn't often go anywhere.
01:05:44
But something else, too. Cates argued that the jury verdict was contrary to the weight of the evidence which is a pretty big deal and also a pretty big stretch The judge can re the evidence because the judge was there The judge got to see all the testimony got to hear all the witnesses got to see everything that happened in
01:06:06
the courtroom. It's got to be such a long shot though because judges look at jury verdicts all
01:06:11
the time and they say, well the jury, you know, they looked at the same evidence, they made their
01:06:15
decision and that's the way the law works. Absolute long shot. Cates put it into his motion almost as
01:06:21
an afterthought, really. Hoping against hope the judge would see what the jury apparently did not.
01:06:26
The state's blood expert's testimony didn't add up. Dwayne Cates had been around for quite a while,
01:06:31
so he knew he was tilting at windmills. Appeals of that sort almost never succeed. Almost never.
01:06:39
Absolutely. It was a Hail Mary pass, but I felt confident in it. The prosecutor submitted his own
01:06:45
brief, too, denying any misconduct and standing by the evidence and his case. Then...
01:06:51
So then what? You sit back and wait? Absolutely. How was Rob doing in the meantime?
01:06:56
Rob was in jail, so I don't think Rob was doing very well. In his cell, Rob Fisher, lawyer that he is, figured out the timing of the thing. First,
01:07:06
the judge would hear the arguments, then spend some time working on her ruling. So that first
01:07:11
week he didn't even think about it same the second week and then rob started to worry kates would
01:07:17
visit him periodically do you get a chance to talk to him much i did and and it was hard i hated to
01:07:24
go see him in jail what had happened to this man's life same business as you successful attorney
01:07:30
in a different type of law but just the same what had happened to that life of his it was gone
01:07:36
Imagine, Keith, police walk in the door right now. They put you in handcuffs, and they lock you up.
01:07:43
And you lose everything. You lose your house. You lose your business. You lose your career.
01:07:48
It's all gone. Boom. In an instant, it's all gone. But of course, in just one instant, Lee Ratter's life was gone forever.
01:07:59
What prison term would atone for that? That was also up to the judge. But from her, as the date for sentencing approached, there was not a word.
01:08:11
Coming up, stunning news jolts everyone in the case. It was like a shot to the heart. How is that even possible?
01:08:19
Does that happen? I'd never even heard of that. When Dateline continues. As 2014 began, Rob Fisher was waiting, waiting for the judge's ruling on the motion for a new trial,
01:08:43
all the while sitting in an isolation cell in the Maricopa County Jail. You're an ex-cop, which adds to it.
01:08:51
Right. How did that complicate your life? They put me in protective custody, locked down for 23 hours a day.
01:08:59
one day at a time through all of January, then February, and then it was the 28th.
01:09:06
Rob was due in court in a week for his sentencing hearing. And that's when Dwayne Cates came to call.
01:09:13
I asked him, you know, so do we hear anything? He goes, well, before we talk about that, let's talk about next Friday's hearing.
01:09:21
I told him that, you know, he's got to get ready. And then he looks at me with a big grin and says,
01:09:25
it's not a sentencing hearing, it's a bond hearing. because you're getting out of jail.
01:09:30
It was stunning, overwhelming. I was ecstatic. I was elated. I was thrilled. And Dwayne Cates felt like he'd just won the lottery.
01:09:42
It very rarely happens that a judge will step in and re-weigh the evidence and say the jury just plain got it wrong.
01:09:51
Remember, Cates made two arguments for a new trial. The first, an allegation of prosecutorial misconduct,
01:09:57
was rejected by the judge. His second argument, the total long shot, was that Rob's conviction wasn't supported by the evidence.
01:10:07
And what do you know? The long shot, the Hail Mary, succeeded and caused the judge to throw out the verdict.
01:10:15
I'm going to read a little bit of it here. The detective's opinion that the defendant staged the scene
01:10:19
by manipulating Lee's body is not supported by the physical evidence, lacks credibility, and is sheer speculation.
01:10:24
The DNA and fingerprint evidence are completely inconsistent with the verdict. Sheer speculation.
01:10:30
Have you ever heard that from a judge before? Yes, but it's nice to hear it when it's, you know, on the other side.
01:10:36
And it was sheer speculation. The judge was particularly scathing about the state's blood expert.
01:10:43
She said he was guilty of a fatal flaw when he tried to decipher those bloody footprints
01:10:48
because he wrongly interpreted the prints as facing the opposite direction. And the judge said, all but wagging her finger, that he backtracked and repeatedly provided inconsistent testimony in the stand.
01:11:02
That was their key witness. I mean, that was the key to their case. And he was not credible.
01:11:09
And so one chilly night in March 2014, Rob Fisher walked out of the county jail and into the arms of his lawyer, the guy who took a chance on the long shot.
01:11:19
It's been a long, long road. Rob's out. He's tired. But if Rob was relieved and happy, Lee's family was not.
01:11:31
They'd been making plans to fly to Arizona for the sentencing when they got the call.
01:11:36
And the prosecutor said, don't get on the plane, don't come. And it was like a shot to the heart.
01:11:45
because how is that even possible that a judge can step in as a 13th juror and overturn a verdict?
01:11:53
Belinda couldn't wrap her head around the judge's ruling either. I'm like, really? This, I mean, does that happen?
01:12:00
I'd never even heard of that. So now Belinda had to accept the second of those two bad options.
01:12:06
That her husband took his own life. I got a text from my dad after he read it. And he just said,
01:12:18
there's no doubt Rob didn't do this, that Lee committed suicide. I guess there's just...
01:12:30
No denying it now. Well, I get it now. It's like you've been through a rollercoaster of different kinds of grief, right?
01:12:42
Yeah. And with that kind of grief came guilt. Why didn't I do anything to stop it?
01:12:52
What if I had only said this or what if I had only done something to make that different?
01:13:00
For him to still be here, for him to know how important and that the money didn't matter.
01:13:08
So, of course, the good old what-if game. And if only I... Yeah, sure. Took it more seriously, you know, really listened to what he was trying to say to me.
01:13:24
To maybe have been a better wife. Rob went back to California, trying from scratch to put his life back together.
01:13:40
The state of Arizona has taken two years out of my life, and I refuse to let them take any more time.
01:13:46
So we are going forward in our life as though this is behind us. But Prosecutor Jay Rademacher,
01:13:54
he had different plans for Rob Fisher. so end of the story oh no not at all coming up for rob a devastating turn of events jay called me directly and said that
01:14:13
we got a another grand jury and we're going to arrest him again i just broke down and
01:14:20
started crying and just in disbelief. After his murder conviction was thrown out Rob Fisher tried to get his old life back which meant starting from scratch the family law practice that imploded and died when he was charged
01:14:51
We've lost our home. We are living, you know, at the good graces of close friends.
01:14:58
I joke with my wife that it's like we're 17 again and we're starting over. Lee's New York family was stuck in place
01:15:07
felt like justice had been stripped away it was horrible the prosecutor told them be patient
01:15:16
and he filed an appeal to get the conviction reinstated claiming the judge had abused her discretion
01:15:22
it's like kicking the hopeful can down the road you know just praying that you know we get a resolution
01:15:31
And Belinda told us recently she just inched along. No choice, really, as a single mom.
01:15:39
Pretty horrible most of the time. Trying to navigate things for the girls. Full of uncertainties.
01:15:49
Full of uncertainties and full of questions. But she did not ask Rob those questions.
01:15:57
Never talked about what happened. Were you afraid to do that? I think I was anxious, nervous, emotional.
01:16:10
And here's the sad truth, really. Belinda and Rob had bonded over the shared grief of losing her mother, his late wife, to cancer.
01:16:19
But Lee's death did the opposite. What happened to the relationship with Rob, your relationship?
01:16:27
It was difficult. the losses on so many levels, it drastically changed our relationship
01:16:34
in a lot of ways. 2017 was when the prosecution's appeal finally made its way to the Arizona Supreme Court,
01:16:43
which agreed with the trial court judge. The justices wrote, there was quite simply no physical evidence
01:16:51
that the defendant fired the gun that killed Lee. A loss for the prosecutor Jay Rademacher
01:16:57
and Lee's family. So, case finally closed? No. I think Jay called me directly and said that
01:17:06
we got another grand jury and we're going to arrest him again. Wait, re-arrest Rob?
01:17:13
That's right. Despite a judge in the highest court saying they did not have the evidence,
01:17:18
the state was free to try him again. And that just what the prosecutor planned to do So basically we back at square one In February 2019 Rob Fisher was again charged with second murder
01:17:33
He was released on bail, returned to California as he awaited trial. Well, we were excited, I think, when we got the first trial date.
01:17:41
They led us to believe that they had a strong case going forward, stronger than the first time.
01:17:48
But did they? A year passed, and then it was 2020, and COVID closed down courthouses that year and the next year.
01:17:59
Lee's mom had suffered a debilitating stroke, but, said her family, hope of seeing a conviction kept her alive.
01:18:06
By the fall of 2021, it had been more than a decade since Lee was killed. And that's when Lee's sister got this update from the family's victim advocate.
01:18:16
And she's like, I have some bad news. And, you know, the worst news that you could ever possibly imagine her to say would be they're dropping the case.
01:18:27
And that's what she said. The state of Arizona had dismissed the case against Robert Fisher.
01:18:34
The court papers simply said it was in the interest of justice. It's disbelief, then shock, then anger.
01:18:42
like I'm shaking just thinking about it. What she told us was that it wasn't Jay's decision,
01:18:53
that the decision came from above him, from his superiors, from a committee of higher-ups.
01:19:04
Lisa had one phone call with the prosecutor's office in which she said they mentioned concern about the blood evidence.
01:19:11
So they did say that there was a stain that was looked at, and it was inconclusive for homicide or inconclusive for suicide.
01:19:20
I don't know if that's what made them decide, let's not go to trial then. We wanted to ask Prosecutor Jay Rademacher what happened to the evidence
01:19:29
he so confidently said pointed to murder. He, declined to be interviewed, referred us to a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office
01:19:37
who told us it was determined there was insufficient evidence to proceed with the criminal prosecution.
01:19:44
Just in disbelief that 11 years was over just like that. That was the closure. Belinda said that while she's finally got that elusive thing called closure,
01:19:58
she's angry it took so long. When there wasn't enough evidence, they should have stopped.
01:20:05
And yet they kept going irregardless because it wasn about the truth It was about them winning a case And we paid the price for it
01:20:20
Mind you, Rob's case was dismissed without prejudice, which means the state could theoretically come after Rob yet again.
01:20:29
But this time, it seems everyone wants to move on. Now has to be the time because it's like quicksand.
01:20:38
You're stuck and you can't move. And, you know, it's paralyzing and it takes your breath away
01:20:44
and you can't sleep, but you can't live your entire life like that. And now, finally, Belinda could find the courage to ask Rob
01:20:53
the hard questions she'd been holding in her heart for 11 years. What were the central questions?
01:21:01
How the gun got introduced that night. What did he tell you? Before I got home that evening, Lee had watched Rob take the gun apart and place it in his bag, which answered one of the questions.
01:21:19
How did he even know the gun was there? That was a key for me. While some of the questions won't be answered until I hopefully see him again, Lee, in heaven,
01:21:31
at least I got a little bit of clarity. Which is that Lee knew where to find the gun
01:21:40
he must have used to take his own life. It's been more than seven years since we last interviewed Rob Fisher,
01:21:48
but recently he told us off camera he is still trying to piece his life back together.
01:21:55
Rob has decided not to talk to us for this report, but what has this done to him?
01:22:01
He's ready to move on with his life, and he wants a relationship with the girls and I.
01:22:07
And I think he's ready to close this chapter. And now? And now we move forward. You know, my girls have a bright future ahead of them, and he would be so proud.
01:22:26
and we march on with memories of a great man. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
01:22:38
We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.
01:22:45
I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News. Good night. you