00:00:00
A beautiful woman at the heart of a generation-old mystery that tore a family apart.
00:00:07
You can still hear them crying. A young mom, torn between her photographer husband and her photographer lover, found dead in her own home.
00:00:16
It was just blood everywhere. But it would take years before DNA science would advance enough to unlock the clues inside it.
00:00:27
It has a story to tell. But then, there was this diary. It, too, had a story to tell.
00:00:33
Everything she knew about him was a lie. A husband under suspicion. You start getting more convinced that he was part of that crime scene.
00:00:41
A lover, the subject of speculation. All of a sudden, he has a motive. After more than a quarter century, would this family get justice?
00:00:51
I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with Haunting Images
00:00:59
Boyd Underwood was back Back where he always belonged Probably shouldn't have retired in the first place
00:01:15
Born detective like Boyd Now the buzz cuts and shark suits all around them Were a generation younger with their high tech gear
00:01:23
in their fancy new Anaheim PD. But who else had the experience to make sense of what was in here?
00:01:29
This room of lost causes, so many cases gone cold. Justice denied. Like the one about her.
00:01:38
Though, God knows, back then when they gave it to him, it didn't look so hot. It was like, we sure were going to get involved in this, you know.
00:01:47
In hindsight, I'm not sure that's the thing I should have done. Maybe not. But then Boyd opened that file.
00:01:55
And what a story he found there of the beautiful woman, the curious lies, and those strange books with their long-ago private thoughts.
00:02:05
But was he obsessed? Should he have let it consume more than a decade of his life, follow him into retirement?
00:02:12
The woman he found in here was Catherine, Kit, as people called her. And certainly to an idolizing little sister named Donna, she was something.
00:02:22
Everywhere she went, she was just this bright smile that brought light into a room and you just gravitated towards her.
00:02:31
Donna and Kit shared just about everything. And she's just shining, you know, she's just gorgeous.
00:02:39
And she's just Kit. And there's gawky little Donna, you know, and she's just, come on, let's go, Kit, let's go have fun.
00:02:45
And then the fairy tale that began in, well, Happiest Place on Earth, isn't that what they call it?
00:02:54
It was 1974, Kit landed a job at the It's a Small World attraction at Disneyland.
00:03:01
It's where she met who else? Prince Charming. It seemed like a fairy tale. She was really happy.
00:03:08
And we were happy for both of them. His name was Gregory Mordick. He was a foreman on It's a Small World, and he was gentle and easy.
00:03:19
One of a kind, really. That he loved to cook was not so unusual, but he also loved sewing.
00:03:26
And she liked that. Liked it also when he told her about his college degree and his service in Vietnam.
00:03:33
And so the wedding in 1977 was magic. Kit was happy, and before long, pregnant. First with Elise, then Brianna, and then career.
00:03:46
Kit had studied home economics and so launched her dream to become a food stylist,
00:03:51
which means she was the person who would make it all look so wonderful in the ads.
00:03:55
It's something I don't have an eye for because all those corn kernels look the same to me.
00:04:00
But when you're a food stylist, it's your job to find the best. Was she good at it?
00:04:05
Very, very. Her sister Donna still has food photographs get designed before some of Boyd Underwood's young detective buddies were born.
00:04:14
Published back in the early 80s by the L.A. Times Home magazine. And that's when the strange story really began.
00:04:25
Maybe it was the fact she'd been married four years. Was she bored? Or maybe it was the close quarters, the long hours,
00:04:30
with the photographer of the food she prepared. there was an affair. Kit was in love, and she was Catholic and consumed with guilt
00:04:40
and confessed it all to her husband. She went to him and said, I've been with another man.
00:04:47
The very night it happened, Gregory seemed prepared to forgive. They both still swore
00:04:53
they cared deeply for each other, but there ain't just tough enough for two. There wasn't
00:04:58
enough room for three. It was over. That Christmas of 1982, Kit's big brother Joe O'Connell saw how
00:05:06
it was with the new guy. It was obvious that they were very happy with each other. Very, very happy.
00:05:13
His name was Henry, had his own photography studio, and Donna dropped by one morning when
00:05:19
Kit was there. She was happy, and she was in love to someone that treated her really good,
00:05:25
and was in love with her. They would have met a great family. Kit was bursting with plans,
00:05:33
announced she was moving to Los Angeles from Orange County to be closer to her food styling work.
00:05:39
And then, that weekend, it was January 1983. Decades later, what happened that weekend,
00:05:46
the mystery of it, was in a file on Boyd Underwood's desk. And a family was thinking back,
00:05:52
trying to piece together those incomprehensible events starting with that first call Called her at home It was slightly before 10 Saturday morning Did she pick up Nope You know I didn think anything of it
00:06:06
She's just gone for the day already. I missed her. She was supposed to come on Saturday night, and we didn't hear from her.
00:06:12
She didn't come and didn't call. Older brother Joe remembers how he figured she was just busy with her move from Anaheim up to L.A.
00:06:20
No cause for alarm. It wasn't until Sunday night they decided to check on her. So Joe says he and Kit's boyfriend, Henry, drove down to Anaheim to Kit's house.
00:06:32
There were no lights on in the house that we could see. So we started to walk away, thinking everything is fine.
00:06:37
And then, as we turned to leave and walk off the porch, Henry just looked into the garage.
00:06:44
We saw our car. And that's when panic started. It was a blur from that point on.
00:06:53
Everything frantic then. Joe wrapped his jacket around his arm, he remembered, getting ready to punch his fist through the window off the porch.
00:07:00
He saw Henry run around back, and within moments heard it, Henry screamed. Henry had managed to get into the house through an unlocked patio door.
00:07:10
He opened the front door. Joe stepped inside, into a nightmare. I saw her lying there.
00:07:17
It was just blood everywhere. She was dead. She was murdered. Coming up, Kit's brother and boyfriend get grilled by police.
00:07:27
Was he questioned closely? Oh, yeah. We both were. When Dateline continues. How violent was that scene?
00:07:45
Her head was almost gone. The case was old and cold when he found it. But before long, Detective Boyd Underwood was sucked right into the puzzling mystery
00:07:57
of what happened to the beautiful young food stylist back in January 1983. Kitt's brother Joe O'Connell told Boyd about finding her body,
00:08:06
about having to tell their parents. One of the hardest things I've ever done is to call my mom and dad,
00:08:12
tell her what happened. I can still hear them crying. Joe remembered how, having heard not a peep from Kit that weekend in 83,
00:08:19
he and Kit's boyfriend, Henry, drove through the Sunday night dark to check on her.
00:08:25
How they found her in the dining room, lying in a pool of her own blood. Her throat had been slashed.
00:08:31
She was nude from the waist down. Henry says Joe seemed to be a wreck. We were both crying.
00:08:36
Both of us out of control. Maybe Kit's killer was out of control, too. The place was a mess.
00:08:43
The TV haphazardly placed near the front door. The speakers ripped from the walls.
00:08:47
A potted plant fallen on the floor. The chaotic scene, her skirt and underwear pulled down like somebody had raped her, killed her.
00:08:56
Started to burglarize the house, then left before he was done. But to the police back then, it looked phony, like things had been staged somehow.
00:09:05
No sign of forced entry, just the rear sliding door slightly ajar. The same entry, by the way, that Henry slipped through to find her body.
00:09:13
Back then, at the end of that weekend in January 83, police set out right away to interview people in Kit's inner circle, including Henry.
00:09:23
Was he questioned closely? Oh, yeah, we both were. Of course. Detectives also called Gregory by then Kit's estranged husband.
00:09:32
I got a call that Kitty was dead. More than a quarter century later, he said, the memory still haunts him.
00:09:39
I remember sitting at the table, shaking. Just shivering. Sherwin was just upset.
00:09:45
In a flash, says Gregory, his whole world flipped upside down after that call. As Kit's estranged husband, he too was treated as a person of interest, of course.
00:09:55
And just like they did Henry, police interviewed Gregory. And you didn't kill Captain?
00:10:01
No. That one was too beautiful for that. He'd just seen Kit that weekend, he told police,
00:10:08
when he'd gone to her house to fetch their daughters for the weekend. A moment that lives on in his memory very clearly, he told us.
00:10:16
We got to the house about 10 o'clock in the morning to pick him up for a birthday party.
00:10:20
He and Kit chatted briefly, he said. And while the girls finished getting ready,
00:10:24
Gregory remembered going back and forth from the house, loading up his VW bug with presents for the birthday party,
00:10:30
along with the girls' car seats and overnight bags. I got to the car, rearranged things a little bit, put them in,
00:10:38
made sure the gate was closed, drilled off. and went to a party. By the time Gregory had his chat with detectives,
00:10:46
the autopsy report had come in and it pretty much eliminated him as a viable suspect.
00:10:51
It said Kit was killed during p.m. hours on Saturday. Gregory had already taken the girls to a birthday party by then.
00:10:59
So, if not Gregory, then who? Police wanted to know if Gregory had seen anything unusual that day.
00:11:07
Could somebody have been lurking, waiting for him to drive off? Was there anybody else there at the time?
00:11:14
No. Not in the house. Okay. You went back out to your car in front. Put the kids in the car.
00:11:22
Put the presents in. Then what'd you do? Back, close the gate. Try the car and left.
00:11:30
You didn't go back into the house at that time for anything? No. They'd made an agreement about that after they separated, said Gregory.
00:11:37
I was not going back. Police poked around the crime scene. All they gleaned was it looked somehow staged, but no
00:11:47
physical evidence to point who would have wanted to misdirect the police. Oh, except there was this
00:11:53
one curious thing a letter in her handwriting and the intended recipient was sitting right in front of them Coming up There was more than just a letter that might provide a clue in this case
00:12:09
There was a diary, too. Everything she knew about him was a lie. When Dateline continues.
00:12:25
Looking back on it now, with the benefit of 21st century technology, cold case detective Boyd Underwood could see the murder of that beautiful young mother in Anaheim Hills, California,
00:12:35
could quite possibly have been solved. After all, there was blood all over the crime scene.
00:12:42
Probably that blood had a story to tell. But back in the winter of 83, DNA was still science fiction.
00:12:49
So the cops back then worked the few leads they did have. the sort of thing that might, they hoped, produce some circumstantial evidence of something.
00:12:59
Like the unopened letter lying on the dining room table. Kit Mordig had written it to her estranged husband.
00:13:07
I'm ready to go forward, the letter says. I don't want to be disgruntled or angry.
00:13:12
I want you to know I forgive you for everything and ask your forgiveness for the very deep pain I put you through.
00:13:20
So, pain, forgiveness, but for what? Gregory himself offered one possible answer.
00:13:28
His dream, while they were married, kids too, he said, was to launch a business, food photography.
00:13:34
She would prep it. He, an aspiring photographer, would shoot it. It would have been an easy home-based business.
00:13:40
Why wasn't it? Well, she decided to go out before I was ready. and that's when she met Henry
00:13:48
and started doing food photography for him. Ah, yes, Henry, that other photographer.
00:13:55
So she did exactly what you wanted to do, only she did it with a different guy. Yeah.
00:14:00
And then you two would work together. We worked together. But that never happened.
00:14:04
It never happened. It never happened because, well, you already know the other thing that happened,
00:14:10
the affair with Henry, the guilt, Kit's confession. Gregory wrote about it in his diary.
00:14:17
This is from August 31, 1981. Kit had an affair with Henry. The act has not diminished my love or devotion to her one bit.
00:14:26
I'm truly in love with a special person. I find myself surprisingly acceptable to this whole situation.
00:14:32
Now let's get on with our love and life and anyone who will join us. As long as the joiner does not try to hurt what Kit and I have.
00:14:41
It was like you were kind of accepting the idea that there'd be two men in this relationship.
00:14:47
It wasn't so much accepting as it was going, all right, this happened. She's a wonderful person. I can see why somebody would be attracted to her.
00:14:57
But we could move on. But? Yeah, we moved on, but separately. Separately because of Henry, but also because of that diary.
00:15:08
Kit's sister Donna knew Gregory kept one. She recalled asking Kit about it. And I remember for years, I didn't ever read it.
00:15:16
I just, oh no, that's his. You know, that's his private work. But there it was, and temptation won.
00:15:25
Gregory was out of town. Kit read those private pages and discovered the man she was married to
00:15:32
had lied to her, whopping lies, about graduating from college, about serving in Vietnam.
00:15:38
Now any thought of saving the marriage was done. And caught in his lies, Gregory took refuge in his diary.
00:15:46
This is what he wrote on September 8, 1982. All of my deceptions have come to light.
00:15:53
No service in Vietnam, did not graduate from college, and a few more to cover an escape route from this relationship.
00:16:02
Why would you have said those things? Again, it goes back to this guy who liked to sew, who didn't fit in at Disneyland very well, wasn't invited to the parties.
00:16:15
So I decided to embellish my life a little bit. And all of a sudden, people liked me.
00:16:22
But there was more. As Kit read her husband's diary, she discovered a list of women's names.
00:16:30
Were these women he had slept with? Gregory denied it, said these were the names of women he admired.
00:16:37
He'd never slept with any of them. But... How do you read someone's diary and you go, everything she knew about him was a lie?
00:16:44
Months later, Kit filed for divorce. And so when she was murdered just six days before the divorce was to be finalized,
00:16:52
it wasn't long before her family pointed a finger at Gregory. But the police just didn't have enough evidence to arrest him.
00:16:59
Somebody left that house with a lot of blood on him. And here I leave the house and go straight to a birthday party.
00:17:04
It's not like I disappeared for hours. And you're saying you had no blood on you because people would have seen it.
00:17:09
No blood, no cuts. The host of the party said Gregory was one of the first guests to arrive
00:17:14
and was his normal, helpful, happy self. Still, in the weeks and months that followed, the suspicion took its toll
00:17:22
and Gregory finally moved, left Southern California for Spokane, Washington, with his girls, naturally.
00:17:29
and gradually the investigation petered out, the case went cold. But as the years passed, the O'Connells relinquished hope
00:17:38
that there would ever be justice for Kitt. Which, of course, is where Boyd Underwood entered the story.
00:17:45
Snooping through that old dead file, those forgotten private lives. If he just dug a little deeper what secrets might he find Coming up old evidence plus new science begins to yield some clues All of that taken together would certainly have ratcheted up the case against him
00:18:06
You start getting more convinced that he was part of that crime scene. When Dateline continues.
00:18:21
Gregory Mordick wanted a fresh start. He was now the single father of two small daughters,
00:18:27
and bringing them up among suspicious in-laws in the town where their mother was murdered
00:18:31
was increasingly unappealing. So Gregory set up a house in eastern Washington in a middle-class home in Spokane,
00:18:39
and he went about organizing a normal life. He was, it is generally agreed, an excellent father to his two little girls.
00:18:47
They had security. They had a parent that was very involved in their life. And for himself, Gregory went back to his first love, taking pictures.
00:18:58
He set up a studio in downtown Spokane, photography by Gregory. And Kit's dreadful death a thousand miles south in California faded into history.
00:19:09
Except for a family, Kit's family, convinced, right or wrong, that her killer was, in fact, Gregory.
00:19:15
They had, after all, witnessed the shouting and shoving matches, the acrimony that preceded the breakup,
00:19:21
and the murder. By 1985, pretty much we knew that he'd gotten away with it. Did you ever give up on the idea
00:19:30
that someday there would be justice? Sure. In this world, I did. It was 1999, long after the family had given up,
00:19:39
when Boyd Underwood came along. One of the administrators asked me if I would look at this case in particular.
00:19:45
And if anyone could break the case, maybe Boyd could. Anaheim cop since 1964, rose up the ranks to homicide detective,
00:19:54
was even assigned to protect President Nixon on a visit during the 68 campaign. He'd heard about Kitt's murder back in 83,
00:20:01
but by then he'd gone to work at the DA's office, where he retired in 95. So what was he doing snooping around this old file years later in 1999?
00:20:12
Simple. Boyd wasn't the retiring type. Came back to work in new unit in the Orange County DA's office,
00:20:19
trackers, they called it. Its mission? Revisit cold cases and close them. Here he was, the last faint chance for justice.
00:20:27
Probably go nowhere. But then something caught his attention. A piece of evidence found back in 1983 in Kit's closet.
00:20:36
A plastic bag. The criminals at that time just identified the evidence on the plastic bag
00:20:43
as being human blood. was not the same type of blood from the victim. In fact, in the early 80s, that's all science could tell them,
00:20:51
that the blood on the bag was a different type than the victim's. But silently, patiently, that DNA waited.
00:20:59
And in 1999, it was a whole new scientific world. Back in 83, they had obtained a blood sample from the husband.
00:21:09
We got a match. That was his blood that was found in his plastic bag. Inside a closet.
00:21:13
inside the closet. Though, of course, that was also Gregory's closet for more than four years.
00:21:19
He'd only been out of the place a couple of months. Boyd decided to have all the evidence retested,
00:21:25
and now Gregory's DNA turned up in several places. A tiny spot on the closet doorknob,
00:21:32
on a rear sliding glass door, and in a powder room sink. But the amount was minuscule, so
00:21:39
Perhaps it meant nothing. Gregory could have left it there when he lived in the house, except...
00:21:46
The bathroom sink had her blood and his DNA mixed. On the sliding door, there was a mixture of her blood and his blood.
00:21:55
You start getting more convinced that he was part of that crime scene. Then Boyd listened to the old police interviews from 1983, and something jumped out.
00:22:06
On the day Gregory saw Kidd had picked up his girls, he said, He'd put them in their car seats, then gone back toward the house to close the front gate.
00:22:14
When he returned to the car, he told detectives, his elder daughter asked him a question.
00:22:20
What took you so long, Eddie? It's closed the gate. Did you get a fight with mommy?
00:22:25
No, don't do that anymore. I'm thinking, why would he want to put that in there?
00:22:32
Remember, Gregory had said he never went back into the house after strapping the girls into the car.
00:22:39
But if his daughter complained he was gone too long, maybe he did go in there and took the time to kill Kit.
00:22:47
All in all, decided Boyd, there was enough evidence by 2001 to warrant a little visit with Gregory up in Spokane.
00:22:55
You were willing to talk to us about the death of your wife, Catherine Marty? And he was, as he had been years earlier, perfectly cooperative.
00:23:06
He even let them search through his house. So Boyd and colleagues offered Gregory a chance to confess.
00:23:13
Tell us how it happened. What happened when you went back to the house? I don't recall going back to the house.
00:23:21
Come on, Greg. I don't. How can your blood be mixed with her blood and you not recall going back in the house?
00:23:29
How can you not remember? You can see how weak that is. And how can your wife's cab be almost severed from the corpse body and you not remember?
00:23:40
I mean, I just charged people. But Boyd didn't charge him. Couldn't. Because the prosecutor told him he just didn't have enough
00:23:52
to make a case. The interview and search did produce a few old diaries. Gregory had never thrown
00:24:00
But it wasn't enough. Did you think about just giving up on it? No. There was something there.
00:24:06
I've always thought so. I don't think I could ever give up on it. And then, summer of 2007, Boyd was grousing to one of the young guys.
00:24:14
Felt like he had a case, but how could he sell it to the DA's office? And, well, Boyd's been around for a long time.
00:24:23
More than DNA science has changed. I was working with a fellow, and I call them propeller heads,
00:24:28
because they're sort of computer. They're stepping too ahead of me, anyway. So he suggested, why don't you do a PowerPoint?
00:24:35
I said, what is a PowerPoint? He learned fast. And finally, the evidence assembled in that PowerPoint presentation,
00:24:43
bits of Gregory's blood in the house, his and Kit's DNA mixed on that rear slider in the bathroom sink,
00:24:49
and Gregory's diaries, persuaded the DA. Still, to solidify their case, might be wise, the DA decided,
00:24:57
for Boyd to pay Gregory one last visit in Spokane, see if he could turn up some fresh evidence,
00:25:04
perhaps with luck to puncture Gregory's consistent denial that he'd gone back into the house
00:25:09
after putting their little girls in the car that long ago Saturday morning. So in 2008, 25 years after the murder,
00:25:18
Boyd took one last shot. Two colleagues conducted the interview and used an old, if unlovely, tactic,
00:25:25
perfectly legal, mind you. They told Gregory a lie. It was in more polite parlance.
00:25:32
A ruse. Give us something here. Give us an opportunity to help figure this out. The detective told Gregory that his DNA had been found on the waistband of Kit's tights.
00:25:43
He pushed Gregory to explain how could it have gotten there. Remember, it wasn't true.
00:25:49
His DNA wasn't found on her clothes. But listen to what Gregory says. What really happened that day?
00:25:56
What happened when you went back in that second time? Why'd you go back in? I took the kids out to the car and forgot the birthday present.
00:26:04
What happened when you got back in the house? Because that's where the crime was holding.
00:26:07
I picked up the present and left. And you heard it. Gregory changed his story just enough.
00:26:14
He put himself in the murder scene alone with Kit. And with that, a quarter century after the murder of his estranged wife,
00:26:23
Gregory Mordick was arrested and charged. with first-degree murder. Boyd called Kitt's brother, Joe.
00:26:30
I think he said, we've arrested him, and I didn't know what for, honestly. Remember, I'd given up.
00:26:38
Why did you arrest him? Why, indeed. DNA from an uncertain time, a few ambiguous comments
00:26:46
in a private diary, and a cop's trick that produced a slightly edited story. Was it anywhere near enough?
00:26:56
Maybe not. Coming up, the focus was about to fall on the other man in Kit's life.
00:27:05
If the relationship wasn't working out and he was going to lose her, all of a sudden he has a motive.
00:27:11
When Dateline continues. 26 years later, here he was, older, grayer, so hard of hearing he wore earpieces in court.
00:27:28
Gregory Mordick, mild-mannered photographer, sat at the defense table and listened to the
00:27:34
prosecution accuse him of murdering the lovely young wife who'd rejected him. But was this going to be easy?
00:27:42
No, it wasn't. I was just convinced by the evidence that this case was provable.
00:27:47
Dan Wagner was the prosecutor assigned to the case. He believed in it, mostly because he believed in science, in the DNA.
00:27:56
It just waits in the locker room, in the dark, waiting. And, you know, this modern technology brought it out, and it has a story to tell.
00:28:05
He showed the jury tiny drops of Gregory's blood on a closet doorknob on a plastic bag found inside the closet.
00:28:12
A mixture of Gregory DNA and Kit blood on a rear sliding door And the fiesta resistance the one piece of evidence that according to the prosecutor inextricably linked Gregory to the murder It came out of the bowl of a bathroom sink
00:28:26
Kit's blood mixed with Gregory's DNA. Given the separation that he hadn't been living in the house for months,
00:28:32
there's no innocent explanation for his DNA remaining on that particular spot of the sink.
00:28:38
Then, the medical examiner who performed Kit's autopsy all those years ago took the stand,
00:28:42
the very one who signed off on the autopsy report that said Kit was killed during p.m. hours.
00:28:49
Now, a quarter century later, he told the jury, he'd re-examined his report and decided it was possible Kit was killed as early as 10 a.m.
00:29:00
when Gregory was at the house. And as for motive, there were those diaries, the ones obtained by Detective Boyd Underwood.
00:29:09
When I first saw them, they were downstairs There is in what I would call a stories room.
00:29:14
Boyd sat in the witness stand as Prosecutor Wagner read through Gregory's diaries,
00:29:19
painting a picture of a rejected man who seemed tormented by the possibility he'd lose his children in the divorce.
00:29:26
The hardest part is saying goodbye to my girls, not tucking them in. This will be devastating. This is almost incapacitating.
00:29:34
The diaries were important. They gave us some insight into the defendant's mind, particularly how he was very attached to his daughters, more so than the average parent, let's say.
00:29:46
But there was more in those diaries, said the prosecution. Gregory confessed in his private place that there had been violence in that marriage breakup, the last incident only weeks before Kit was killed.
00:29:57
Goodbye, Kitty. Kitty and I had a fight this evening. She struck me. I lost my temper and struck back.
00:30:04
Then there was that police interview, in which, reacting to a planted police lie,
00:30:10
Gregory appeared to admit he was in the house with Kit alone on the day of the murder.
00:30:15
So, said the prosecution, opportunity, motive, and DNA all pointed to Gregory as the murderer.
00:30:21
But was that evidence enough? When you get into the details, then you see all the problems that were there.
00:30:30
Not nearly enough, said defense attorney Jack Early. That vaunted DNA sample of Gregory's blood?
00:30:36
Police had a little storage problem with that. When did you discover that Mr. Mortick's vial of blood
00:30:43
had broken in evidence room and spilled on other items? I don't think I was aware of that until maybe 1999 or 2000.
00:30:53
Gregory's blood sample had leaked onto some of the evidence packaging, and that said the defense hopelessly compromised the integrity of the DNA.
00:31:03
Besides, hadn't Gregory lived with Kit almost five years? Of course his DNA would be in the house, said the defense,
00:31:10
and would have mixed with his wife's. But one place Gregory's DNA was not found, said the defense,
00:31:16
was anywhere on Kit's body or clothes, something you'd expect to find if he'd slit her throat and pulled off her clothes.
00:31:25
Besides, said the woman who threw that birthday party Gregory went to after seeing Kit,
00:31:30
He certainly didn't look like he just killed someone. Now, when he was there, did you notice any injuries to Mr. Morning?
00:31:39
No. Did you notice any blood on him in any manner? Oh my goodness, no. Did he, was there anything unusual about him at the party?
00:31:50
No, not at all. But if not Gregory, then who was the killer? Well, wait for it. Through this testimony, the defense made a stunning implication.
00:32:02
Did she tell you that things weren't working out with someone named Henry? I believe that she indicated that there were some problems with him, yes.
00:32:12
Henry? The man Kit left Gregory for? What motive could he possibly have had? Well, now the implication got much bigger.
00:32:22
Well, if the relationship wasn't working out and he was going to lose her, All of a sudden, he has a motive.
00:32:28
And it very important that he moves on to Donna the new sister shortly afterwards Well yes it true at least that Henry and Kit sister Donna did fall in love after the murder Donna wrestled with her emotions in the beginning she says
00:32:45
I don't deserve this, you know. You're my sister's guy. You know, this is weird, but it's not.
00:32:52
Because when it's him and I, it's normal. They married a year after Kit's murder.
00:32:57
The defense saw an opportunity and pounced. Remember that rear sliding door that Henry went through to find Kit's body?
00:33:06
Henry had left the door slightly ajar, the same way the killer had, the defense pointed out.
00:33:11
Let me ask you, do you only partially close doors when you go through them? I don't remember closing the door, so if that's how far I closed it, that's how far I closed it.
00:33:22
There is as much evidence, as much things about Henry as there is about Greg that don't make sense.
00:33:29
Ludicrous, said the prosecutor, and pointed out Henry had an alibi anyway. He was a two-hour drive away in San Diego the day of the murder.
00:33:38
So, now the defense played its final card, Gregory Mordick himself. Did you kill your wife?
00:33:45
No. Why put Gregory on the stand? One main reason. To answer for that final police interview when he'd reacted to that ruse
00:33:55
by appearing to change his story about going back into Kit's house after he picked up his kids the day of the murder.
00:34:02
After you put Bree in and went and closed the gate, did you ever go back into the house?
00:34:07
No. What did you think when they told you about your DNA being found on her clothes?
00:34:12
I was going, there's no way. I didn't touch Kitty that morning. He was shocked, confused by the detective's ruse, the defense told the jury.
00:34:21
But what about those diaries, asked Prosecutor Wagner in his cross-examination. The diaries had seemed to outline a real motive for murder.
00:34:28
And you wrote at various times that it was almost more than you could bear thinking about that separation.
00:34:35
I'm sorry I wrote that down. Why? Because it's come to bite me now. Instead of being true feelings at the time, you're trying to make it bite me.
00:34:46
Might never have been charged had he just thrown those diaries away. Why did you keep them?
00:34:51
There was nothing in there except my history. our history together. What was to be thrown away?
00:34:58
Well, what they did was they looked back and said, look, he was involved in these violent
00:35:01
incidents. And in fact, he even admitted that he was violent in his diary. So he must have
00:35:05
been violent enough to kill. And Kitty started every one of them, unfortunately. I got tired
00:35:10
of being hit. So I grabbed her arms. And I'm the bad guy. Well, was he? After nearly a month of testimony and 26 years since Kit's murder, the jury
00:35:22
retired. And guilty or not? Hard call. Coming up, the jury returns and to the prosecution,
00:35:34
it was just like a gut punch. All the wind went out. When Dateline continues. In the fall of 2009,
00:35:51
a jury in Santa Ana, California puzzled over the case of photographer Gregory Mordick, charged with
00:35:57
killing the wife who'd left him more than a quarter century earlier. The case was largely circumstantial,
00:36:04
a smidgen of possibly tainted DNA, a story that seemed to change, and those sad, possibly desperate scribbles in a private diary.
00:36:14
In a hallway outside the courtroom, Kit's family paced nervously. Her little sister Donna held out hope.
00:36:22
There's no way that there's anything. They'll be back in a few minutes. In fact, it was days.
00:36:29
But the jury did come back. Family members braced themselves and... My understanding is that the jurors are, at this point in time, hung.
00:36:38
Is that right? That's correct. They were hung. Not just hung, split. Six to six.
00:36:44
Six to six was just like a gut punch. All the wind went out. He recovered his poise told the judge he try Mordick again I was attached to the victim family In some respect I felt a certain duty to them And then September 2010 the O filed into court
00:37:03
Prosecutor Wagner stuck to the science, Gregory's DNA in the house. How could his DNA be present when he hadn't lived in the home for more than two months?
00:37:12
I lived there for four and a half years. Yeah, but he'd been away for months. Two months.
00:37:15
Two months is going to eradicate all your DNA. But if she cleans up the house once in a while, yeah, it probably would.
00:37:23
Did she? Kitty was a terrible house cleaner. Even the police said they'd never seen such a filthy house.
00:37:30
The defense, it turned out, had been busy. It had retested the blood evidence on that rear sliding door,
00:37:36
the one that showed a mixture of Kit's blood and Gregory's DNA. And the result was quite stunning.
00:37:42
Gregory and his daughter shared an identical blood protein. We were very excited because we were hoping just one,
00:37:48
and as it ends up, both daughters had that. So it was impossible, defense attorney Jack Early said,
00:37:56
to be absolutely certain it was only a mixture of Gregory's DNA and Kit's blood on that slider.
00:38:02
It could have been a mixture of the entire family piled on over the years. And then, after weeks of testimony, another jury left the courtroom,
00:38:12
and the waiting began again. Based on the results of the first trial, I didn't have the same sense of confidence the second time.
00:38:19
Gregory, however, was confident as Thanksgiving weekend approached. And everybody was going, hey, we'll see you over the weekend.
00:38:26
And then after two days, the jury rang the bailiff. A verdict. We the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant, William Gregory Mordick, guilty of murder in the first degree.
00:38:38
And Gregory, before the shock set in, thought he'd simply heard it wrong. And I just couldn't believe I didn't hear the word not.
00:38:48
I kept on looking at the court clerk going, there's a word missing. But when prosecutor Dan Wagner finally heard those words...
00:38:57
It's a rush. It's a relief. Think about the people behind you, what they've been through, how this much...
00:39:07
what this will mean to them, justice for the victim. At the sentencing hearing, Kitt's family pronounced the words they'd stored up nearly 28 years.
00:39:18
There's a hole in our lives, a hole left by this murder. I wish her children had an idea of what they've missed out on their life.
00:39:28
Oh, but they do, said Gregory in reply. They all do. The O'Connell family thinks they're the only one who has missed Kitty, and that's not true.
00:39:40
She's missed by my family, myself, and my two beautiful daughters. Daughters who, throughout it all, have been staunch defenders of their father.
00:39:49
In court, the elder of the two spoke for both her parents. My family and I have now been sentenced to another 25 years of pain and agony.
00:39:59
I miss my mother very much but it's not fair that my father's being taken away for a long time
00:40:09
the sentence 25 years to life while he sat in jail waiting to be transferred to a new prison life
00:40:17
I asked him about his daughters and Gregory said at least I've got their love and kids family
00:40:29
What do they have? They think she's in my soul. Even though she's not here physically, she's with us.
00:40:37
And finally, one determined detective officially retired again. This case for him was, well...
00:40:46
Very emotional. Was it worth all that time you put on this thing? Oh, yeah. Sure.
00:40:54
The case Boyd Underwood came back for. The case of his life is closed. That's all for now.
00:41:05
I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.